Pelosi Delays Infrastructure Vote

I said yesterday that today would be a test of Bruce's Law, "When there's an important deadline falling due next Monday, and the bosses promise everyone's going to work all weekend to meet it, this won't happen." The much-predicted September 27 vote on the bipartisan $1.5 trillion infrastucture bill has been moved to September 30, or maybe just "sometime this week". (I've been calling it the $1.5 trillion bill, but I've seen numbers from $1.2 to $1.7 trillion.)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a new date for the vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, after committing to moderate Democrats in August that the vote would take place by Monday, September 27.

On Sunday, in a "Dear Colleague" letter, the speaker told Democratic lawmakers the House would begin debate on the bill on Monday and hold the vote on Thursday.

. . . Pelosi told ABC she believes the House will pass the infrastructure bill "this week," but also conceded that she would never bring "a bill to the floor that doesn't have the votes."

While this confirms my prediction that the Monday deadline wouldn't be met, there are broader implications. By promising the vote would maybe sorta kinda take place Thursday, Speaker Pelosi is simply doubling down on an even bigger miracle. Thursday September 30 is also the deadline for a continuing resolution that keeps the government open through December.

The measure theoretically buys Congress about nine additional weeks to negotiate full-year spending bills for the rest of fiscal 2022, or perhaps more likely, an omnibus package that funds most agencies for the remainder of the year.

. . . But it’s unclear whether the continuing resolution will pass both chambers of Congress in its current form. The bill would also suspend the debt limit through Dec. 16, 2022, a measure Republicans have said they’re unwilling to support.

But earlier this month, predictions were much more sanguine about how things would fall together by now. According to The Hill on September 5,

Before October, the House is aiming to pass two major pieces of legislation: a roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a forthcoming $3.5 trillion spending package backed by Democrats that would advance key parts of President Biden’s economic agenda. They’ll also need to pass government funding legislation to avoid a shutdown on Oct. 1.

House leadership has set a Sept. 27 deadline to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill as committee chairs rush to finish drafting their portions of the larger spending package by Sept. 15 to hold a floor vote shortly thereafter.

So as of early this month, work was expected to be complete on the $3.5 trillion bill, with a floor vote, by September 15. This hasn't happened. As best anyone can tell, Speaker Pelosi now intends to crush everything into just a few days:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said in a message to Democrat House members on Saturday that the upcoming week would be a “time of intensity” as the party will try to ram through three major spending bills.

“September 30th is a date fraught with meaning,” Pelosi began. “This week, we must pass a Continuing Resolution, Build Back Better Act and the BIF.” [The BIF is apparently the $1.5 trillion bill.]

But this piece in Politico following Pelosi's announcement outlines the size of the tasks that must now be completed within three days.

The continuing resolution has already passed the House [but faces problems in the Senate], the BIF is awaiting a vote (which Pelosi had promised would be held Monday) and Saturday night, the House Budget Committee moved forward the mammoth reconciliation package, aka BBB. The BBB is headed for a vote on the floor this week, even while it’s far from final as Democratic leaders grasp for “an endgame compromise that can pass both the House and Senate,” write Jennifer Scholtes and Caitlin Emma.

So everything has to turn out exactly right on three separate projects over the next three days, when as of just last week, everyone was going to work all weekend to get only one of them done. Didn't happen. This is not a formula for success. I think Trump may have had the right of it:

Nancy Pelosi should be ashamed of herself. She is a highly overrated person. I know her well. She is highly overrated.

So far, the focus has been on Biden for incompetence or diminished capacity. People need to look harder at Speaker Pelosi.