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Biden's offer to liberals unhappy with framework: Nothing
W. James Antle III 2 hrs ago
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As restive congressional liberals contemplate whether to fall in line behind the White House’s new reconciliation bill framework, President Joe Biden will be doing his best impression of Michael Corleone negotiating with Nevada Sen. Pat Geary.
© Provided by Washington Examiner “My offer is this: nothing,” Corleone said in Godfather II. “Not even the $20,000 for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally.”
That has been the White House’s message to the Congressional Progressive Caucus and other Democrats unhappy with the shrinking top-line number for the reconciliation bill in the days before the framework was announced.
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“We are right now on the verge of making a number of these policies law,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday as she rattled off a series of liberal priorities. “And there are realities of governing and realities of policymaking, including the fact that the alternative to what is being negotiated is not the original package — it is nothing.”
“The president's belief, as you heard him say last night, is that compromise is not a dirty word and that we will get nothing if we do not have 50 votes,” Psaki said last week, after Biden spoke at a CNN town hall in Baltimore, giving surprisingly detailed updates on the status of the reconciliation negotiations. “The alternative is not a larger package. The alternative is nothing.”
“No one got everything they wanted, including me, but that’s what compromise is,” Biden said from the White House before he skipped town for international travel Thursday. “That’s consensus. And that’s what I ran on.”
“I’ve long said compromise and consensus are the only way to get big things done in a democracy, important things for the country,” the president continued. “I know it’s hard. I know how deeply people feel about the things that they fight for.”
"Let’s do it in a timely fashion. Let’s not just keep having postponements and leaving any doubt as to when this would happen,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday afternoon. “For those who said ‘I want to see text,’ the text is there — for you to review, for you to complain about, for you to add to, for you to subtract from, whatever it is.”
Not all the talk from Democrats and the White House was so tough. Pelosi reportedly urged members of her party not to “embarrass” the president as he traveled to meet with world leaders abroad by voting against the reconciliation or bipartisan infrastructure bills.
Biden warned liberals that his presidency and their congressional majorities were riding on the successful enactment of his legislative agenda. “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week," he said.
Nevertheless, this hasn’t kept the Progressive Caucus and its allies from making demands, both for programs to be restored to the reconciliation bill and to delay infrastructure until their partisan spending package has passed.
These lawmakers have watched as their proposals to spend between $6 trillion and $10 trillion were condensed into a $3.5 trillion bill, which has now been shrunk to $1.75 trillion. That is closer to centrist West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s preferred $1.5 trillion price tag than the dreams of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent socialist who Democrats put in charge of the Senate Budget Committee.
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But Biden and his party’s congressional leaders are no longer pretending Build Back Better can be much bigger. There is no grand bargain to be unveiled by the old Senate deal-maker, just old-fashioned vote-counting. They are telling liberals that if they do not pass something close to the $1.75 trillion framework, paired with the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure measure, they will get nothing.
It is not an opening bid likely to endear the White House to the most left-wing Democrats in Congress. But given the realities of next year’s midterm elections, in which Democrats will be defending the narrowest of majorities, and the Progressive Caucus’s support on principle for new climate and social welfare spending of some variety, it’s an argument that could work ultimately work as well for Biden as Michael Corleone.
DemocratiCommunists are holding firm in their party split between radical communists and slightly less radical Communists.
fiden is just a puppet - a senile shell of a Racist white supremacist.
typical of teh KKK history of teh democratiCommunist party.
Buck fiden
From my cold dead hands!
