Never Mind

As I write this, President Biden has delayed his departure for Rome and as far as I can tell is in the process of addressing House Democrats on a whole new economic package that will somehow achieve a Democrat consensus when months of work on the BBB couldn't achieve this. This vignette shows where things actually stood yesterday afternoon as prospects for a vote on the BIF-cum-framework evaporated:

Democrats have already nixed a contentious plan to tax the wealth of roughly 700 billionaires, Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) confirmed Wednesday, after moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) voiced concerns earlier in the day over the proposed provision in President Joe Biden’s spending package.

. . . The senator’s comments came less than six hours after Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, released legislative text for the proposed billionaire income tax, which would have required billionaires and Americans making more than $100 million annually to pay a long-term capital gains tax on unrealized profits.

So they're writing legislation at the very last minute and negotiating over it in public, running things up the flagpole and pulling them down again within hours. That's the status of the BBB -- Manchin has an immediate veto power over anything that might be proposed, except that Sen Sanders and the House progressives have a re-veto power over the BIF. According to Politico,

One Democratic source close to progressive lawmakers said Thursday morning that they had concerns that Sinema and Manchin still have not yet committed to voting for the [BBB] bill. This source added that Sanders has told House progressives he supported their position to hold off on advancing the infrastructure bill unless it and the social spending bill at the same time through their chamber.

. . . And they’re getting support from liberal allies in the Senate.

“A framework is part of getting to a final bill, but I’m not OK with the infrastructure bill being passed out of the House until we actually have a bill in the Senate,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).

According to NPR,

Biden is expected to travel to the Capitol building to address the House Democratic caucus at 9am and then address the nation at 11:30am ET.

This is a developing story.

The aggregators have been very spotty in covering this at all, but think about it. The president delays his departure on a junket, where he'd much prefer to be, in order to address House Democrats and then address the nation. At least in Biden's mind and those of his handlers, this is a full-blown crisis. You don't normally address the nation on short notice unless, say, the cities are burning down or the stock market has crashed.

Think of everything he's ignored, or paid lip service to at best, but a stalemate over a fantasy political agenda is a full-blown crisis. As an Aristotelian who looks for causes, I've got to ask why.

As NPR says, this is a developing story.