What I've Been Saying

As of yesterdy, it looks like Sen Schumer at least is still spinning blarney about a Senate vote on the BBB bill, now "the week of November 15". I feel confident this is just yet another version of "we're gonna work all weekend" that we've been hearing since September. How the results of yesterday's elections affect what changes, if any, are made to the BBB text or the schedule is hard to predict, but my guess is that Speaker Pelosi, Sen Schumer, and President Biden will simply double down on their exising positions. As of yesterday, Sen Manchin made his position clear:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he didn’t sign off on a framework for a $1.75 trillion social spending bill before it was released from the White House and that he didn’t think there was a “rush” to get a deal.

“No,” Manchin said, asked if he had signed off on the framework, adding that if he had, his current pushback wouldn’t be “genuine.”

“The White House knew exactly where I stood. There was a couple of concerns that we had that we needed to work through,” Manchin said.

. . . But Manchin indicated that while he thinks Democrats will ultimately pass something — saying they are “going to get something done” — he didn’t view the weeklong break, scheduled to start on Nov. 22, as a hard deadline.

“I’m not putting restraints on timing. I just think it’s going to take quite a while. ... I think time's going to be needed. We’re not in a rush right now,” Manchin said.

He added on Tuesday that he wants a Congressional Budget Office analysis on the impact and the costs of the bill and still didn’t support including Medicare expansion or paid leave in the bill.

Even so, later in the day, Manchin told CNN he

didn't rule out the ambitious time frame that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer laid out earlier Tuesday: putting the bill on the chamber floor during the week of November 15. Manchin, who hours earlier had said it would take "quite a while" to get a deal, said Tuesday evening: "We have all next week. We're going to work into it next week -- as they are working. So if everyone works real hard, I've said, we can get it done before Thanksgiving. We're going to get something done."

But this is nothing new; Sen Manchin has been expressing vague optimism about how quickly they can come to a deal since September -- they just never quite come to the deal he wants. Meanwhile, Republicans have had little to say, I assume on the basis that if your adversaries are destroying each other, you shouldn't get in their way. However,

Tuesday on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) sounded off on the ongoing negotiations among Democrats for their infrastructure bill, which he described as a “hostage” bill.

Host Maria Bartiromo asked Hagerty if he expected a vote on the infrastructure package this week like the Democrats believe could happen.

Hagerty said he thinks it would be “very difficult” for the Democrats to get a vote in this week and suggested “it could well be” next year before Democrats could get a vote in.

But the conventional wisdom has been that if the negotiations for the bill last into 2022, the midterm election year calculations mean it has little chance at that point. The conventional wisdom had also been that the results of yesterday's elections would affect those calculations. The data is certainly in from yesterday's elections.

How this will affecst the actual Democrat strategy is yet to be seen. The link just above continues Sen Hagerty's assessment:

If you look at what the Democrats did and what they’ve been signaling all along, they created their hostage with the so-called infrastructure bill, but the whole point of this hostage was to use it as a way to force moderate Democrats like Joe Manchin, like Kyrsten Sinema and others to vote for this massive socialization of America tax and spending spree that they’ve been talking about.

It's generally recognized that this hostage strategy has failed, and Biden's agenda, stalled by the progressives on one hand but unpopular with the voters on the other, was a factor in the elections' outcome. As of yesterday, it was doubtful the Democrats could easily change course.

“I’ve watched all the attack ads on Terry McAuliffe and not a single one has talked about the [infrastructure bill] not passing. They’ve all been about other things,” Jayapal told reporters, acknowledging the Virginia race was more about state issues than far-left priorities.

Jayapal is one of many far-left members to have blocked the $1.2 trillion bipartisan vote on Thursday. After Manchin’s comments on Monday, however, she changed her position and now supports passing the infrastructure measure this week.

, , , But with the Virginia race closing on Democrats, it may be too late to pass legislation and appear to not be an obstructionist.

“Everything has an impact on everything,” admitted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) “I think at the end of the day, what happens in Virginia is what the candidate stands for, the nature of the campaign, the degree to which the candidate is resonating with the people.”

Sen Manchin And The Leadership Vacuum

With Presidednt Biden out of the country and dozing off on the world stage, Sen Manchin picked a most peculiar time to hold a press conference. According to the Washington Examiner,

Sen. Joe Manchin hit the brakes on a newly touted social welfare spending deal, arguing it needs much more work and consideration before he throws his support behind it.

. . . He accused Democrats of playing “shell games” with the cost estimates of the latest deal, which is half of the initial $3.5 trillion Democrats hoped to spend.

. . . “How can I in good conscience vote for a bill that proposes massive expansion of social programs when vital programs like Social Security and Medicare face insolvency, and benefits can start being reduced as soon as 2026 in Medicare and 2033 in Social Security?” Manchin said. “How does that make sense? And I don't think it does.”

Manchin said he would not decide whether to vote for the bill until the text of the measure is written and, in the meantime, demanded Democrats pass the infrastructure bill, which the Senate approved with bipartisan support last summer.

My first impression is that this announcement simply bypassed both the president and the congressional leadership, and it particularly undermined the impression President Biden had been attempting to create that there is progress on the BIF-BBB deal, with votes imminent. According to Philip Klein at the National Review,

Before leaving for Rome, the White House released a framework that officials tried to present as some sort of breakthrough in ongoing Congressional negotiations. While Biden did not make the explicit claim that he had secured 51 votes in the Senate, the heavy impression was that there was more or less agreement on the broad strokes and they were just ironing out a few minor details.

. . . He went to Capitol Hill to meet with House Democrats in what was supposed to be a speech followed by a vote passing his infrastructure bill.

Instead, Biden took off to Rome and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delayed the vote yet again. Still, Democrats gave the impression that they were just working on a few odds and ends and expected to vote Tuesday. Progressives claimed they were all in and just waiting for Manchin and Senator Kyrsten Sinema to publicly commit to the framework.

But now that Manchin has said that the framework is full of “shell games” and “budget gimmicks” to hide the true cost of the proposal, last week’s theatrics look even more absurd.

What struck me in the immediate aftermath is that the chief reaction came not from Speaker Pelosi or Leader Schumer, but from the junior Rep Jayapal, the chair of the progressive caucus.

Jayapal now says she trusts Biden to get Manchin on board on the bill as it stands now. Trusting Biden to handle Manchin is a new direction for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, notes Heather Caygle. When Biden asked them to trust him with that task last week, Jayapal and other progressives balked:

Why not just “let the president” deal with Manchin from the beginning? The obvious answer: Biden wasn’t dealing with Manchin at all, at least not effectively. Don’t forget that House progressives thought that Biden was bringing them a turnkey BBB with support from both Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema on Thursday, only to feel “bamboozled” when it turned out that Biden hadn’t bothered to nail down those votes.

. . . And this all starts with Joe Biden, whose dilettante approach to agenda implementation got badly exposed in this debacle. Biden doesn’t want to do any work, not even with Manchin, preferring to keep insisting that he’s the smartest guy in the room and everyone else needs to just recognize his brilliance.

It appears that Speaker Pelosi issued a statement only after Rep Jayapal's, and it effectively echoed Jayapal: "The House, Senate and White House continue to move forward with the Build Back Better Act." My takeaway from this episode is that for now, the two main players are Rep Jayapal and Sen Manchin, with Manchin, who's said he's happy with neither bill passing, holding the winning hand. This in turn is another indication that both Speaker Pelosi and President Biden are lame ducks.

Let's Get Back To Incompetence

I've noted that my developing theory of incomptence is starting to show that a major factor, and a major indicator, is an inability to match the calendar with a realistic understanding of the time it takes to finish tasks. We've been seeing this all autumn in the repeated crises over passing the BIF in the House of Representatives, and as I noted yesterday, there's no indication this is going to stop. As The Hill noted, Speaker Pelosi ordered her committee chairs to finish drafting legistlative text for the BBB by last night so the Rules Committee could mark it up for a vote as early as tomorrow.

Even The Hill has now backed off:

A number of sticking points on the $1.75 trillion package could make it difficult to move speedily. These troublesome issues include locking in how the bill is paid for and whether paid leave and prescription drug negotiations will be added. Senate Democrats also need a decision from the parliamentarian on their latest immigration proposal.

House Democratic leadership is hoping to pass both this week, though a House Rules Committee meeting expected on Monday, which would have allowed for floor votes as soon as Tuesday, has been delayed as negotiations continued through the weekend.

But this also ignores the problem for the Senate:

Senate Democrats have been skeptical that they’ll be able to move the spending deal at lightning speed.

The Senate rules for the arcane budget process, known as reconciliation, that Democrats are using to pass the package without GOP support requires an intense floor marathon. And Democratic senators are signaling that they expect a lengthy process to finish the bill.

“That drafting has to see the light of day for some time because there’s going to be challenges, and you have to get a score, and the scoring of it is going to be challenging,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). “It’s going to take some time.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said he hoped the Senate would be able to pass the social spending package before they leave for a weeklong Thanksgiving break, which is expected to start on Nov. 22.

But Sen Kaine neglects to note that there are only nine legislative days left before the Thanksgiving recess, not all of them full days. But this leaves aside the White House's inability to lead the effort to secure passage. The Politico article I linked yesterday is still the best discussion of the White House's role in last week's crisis:

And in a repeat of September's struggles, the White House again did not mount an aggressive lobbying effort to get progressives to provide the votes for the infrastructure package. Despite multiple Cabinet members making calls or virtually meeting with members, none appeared to clearly push for an infrastructure vote on Thursday. Instead Biden's Cabinet warned Democrats against trying to cram too much into the separate social spending package.

. . . The fraught dynamics between the White House and House Democrats in particular have become more pronounced in the past month. Some Democrats say that’s in part due to Klain’s friendly relationship with progressives, which has given the party's liberal wing a powerful White House ally — unlike in prior Democratic administrations.

Klain, multiple sources say, primarily talks to progressive lawmakers and is rarely if ever the person House leadership or centrist Democrats turn to in the White House.

His coziness with the left has frustrated leaders and moderate Democrats who view it, at times, as an impediment to getting Biden’s agenda passed, though it has won him praise from progressives who believe passing as many of their priorities as possible would be a boon to Democrats.

But this also leaves aside the whole question of the debt ceiling, which must be extended by mid-December. Treasury Secretary Yellen has reversed her opinon on using reconciliation to pass it with only Democrat votes, but that in turn requires Sen Schumer to make realistic plans.

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Yellen reiterated that tackling the debt ceiling should “absolutely” be done on a bipartisan basis, as it has in the past. But if a current standoff between Republicans and Democrats over the debt ceiling doesn’t let up, Yellen said Democrats may have to handle the problem themselves.

. . . Last month, Congress passed legislation, with a bipartisan vote in the upper chamber, to temporarily raise the debt ceiling into December, after Yellen warned lawmakers had until Oct. 18 before the U.S. was expected to default on its debt.

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned shortly after that Republicans would not work with Democrats to act on the debt ceiling again, putting pressure on Democrats to address the legislation on their own to avert a default in the weeks ahead.

I'm starting to question whether there's time to get any of this done, especially considering the poor leadership on the Democrat side.

I Guess Halloween Is A National Holiday

I noted last week that the conservative blogs and aggregators have been generally out to lunch covering the BIF-BBB crisis in the House. The only media that've done a consistent job have been Politico and The Hill, as long as you can filter out their wishful thinking. One question the conservatives haven't taken up at all is the obvious one: with the vote last Thursday a didn't happen, what's next? This morning's headline in The Washington Examiner, though, is Biden and Democrats divided over Thomas Jefferson's legacy.

I guess they took the weekend off to stock up on candy for the trick-or-treaters, huh? Where's Byron York? I had to go to The Hill to find any substance at all:

House Democrats are looking to pass both the social spending and bipartisan infrastructure bills as early as Tuesday, a leadership aide told The Hill.

. . . An aide for Democratic leadership told Axios that committees were notified by House leaders that they had to finish any changes on the spending bill by Sunday and that the House Rules Committee could meet as soon as Monday to mark it up.

But it's hard to imagine this is anything but wishful thinking. According to Politico,

The Democratic Party is desperately trying to figure out just how solid Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion social spending framework really is.

Different factions of the party are arguing that the outline the president presented this week is not final, hoping to add back in still-disputed provisions on immigration reform, taxes, Medicare expansion, paid leave and prescription drug prices before the social spending package gets a vote.

The House has already released hundreds of pages of legislation to fully articulate Biden’s vision, the bulk of it devoted to climate change action and the social safety net. Yet even after the House passes its version of the bill, which could happen as soon as next week, some Democrats insist that it’s not the final word.

In other words, even if Speaker Pelosi imposes a cutoff on legislative language for a House version of BBB, she has no control over the Senate -- and indeed, no control over her own progressive caucus. The word is that they threw her out of their Thursday morning meeting last week:

Multiple sources confirmed to The Uprising that Pelosi was “kicked out” of the meeting by Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal.

“She got kicked out and said she was leaving anyway,” a Democratic staffer, who was granted anonymity to discuss the confidential meeting, said of Pelosi.

This suggests to me that Pelosi is simply continuing her "we're gonna work all weekend" story even as it steadily sheds its last vestiges of credibility. The problem is that there's simply no deal so far. The progressives and Sen Sanders aren't happy with the cut down "framework" and want things put back in. Sens Manchin and Sinema have made no specific commitment. President Biden has actually undercut Speaker Pelosi's effort to impose a settlement. Again, Politico:

As Biden prepared for the high-stakes meeting with House Democrats on Thursday, Jayapal made an urgent plea on a call with White House chief of staff Ron Klain: Don’t send the president to pressure liberals to vote Thursday on the Senate’s infrastructure bill without a more progressive social spending bill that’s fully done.

Klain pushed Jayapal, who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, to vote for the infrastructure bill during the call, according to a source familiar with their conversation. Jayapal responded that she wanted to avoid sending Biden off to Europe on Thursday with a failed vote, according to multiple Democrats.

What happened next is a dizzying fall of dominos. Biden didn’t directly ask House Democrats to pass his bipartisan infrastructure bill, leaving Pelosi to make the request. Then Jayapal’s progressives dug in against the infrastructure vote that the speaker wanted to tee up — using the president’s lack of a request for cover.

In other words, it's highly doubtful that, even if Pelosi is able to get a House BBB bill with full legislative language that echoes the "framework", the progressives will buy into it. They'll demand more, which Sens Manchin and Sinema will veto. It's too early to call a cap on the dealmaking.

But the House is in session only for the first week in November, when it takes the following week off for a Veterans Day recess. Then it goes home again for Thanksgiving after only four days the following week. I question whether anything can be finalized in that period of time.

It's harder and harder to avoid thinking Speaker Pelosi is a lame duck. She knows this as well.

So, Why Did The Vatican Limit Coverage Of Biden's Visit?

There hasn't been a whole lot said about Biden's visit to the Vatican, in part I'm sure because by limiting press availability, that was the Vatican's plan. What's leaked out is puzzling. I was particularly taken by this video excerpt, apparently taken by the Vatican and released after the fact:

It partly depicts Biden in a reception line, clearly confused about how this sort of thing works and, taken aback that people are shakng hands with the Holy Father before they get to him, throwing his arms up in a clear "whatever" gesture and later withdrawing his hand and raising it in a strange fist. Dr Jill, who seems to be in the habit of closely monitoring Joe during his public appearances, notices this with a certain hint of anxiety behind her fixed smile.

What strikes me as most peculiar is that I spent formative years in Washington society being groomed by a socially ambitious mother. I've been in reception lines with ambassadors and cabinet secretaries. (My guardian angel whisked me off to LA before this could take full effect.) This sort of routine is just muscle memory, especially for someone like Biden, who spent nearly his whole adulthood in that environment. Yet he acts like a 14 year old, disappointed that he's not Number One. Napoleon handled this stuff better; Hitler simply bypassed it.

Raymond Arroyo suggested something similar on Fox:

Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo said Friday that an awkward moment between President Joe Biden and Pope Francis showed why the Vatican did not want to broadcast the meeting.

Arroyo joined Fox News host Harris Faulkner to discuss Biden’s meeting with the pope as well as the Vatican’s last minute decision not to televise the event.

. . . “I think the Vatican was concerned that a live meeting, video of a live meeting, might expose Biden to a gaffe. No telling what he might say, and you heard some of the blarney about drinking and whiskey and being an Irishman. They wanted to tamp some of that down,” he continued.

The question yet again is whether this is a result of cognitive decline or whether he's always been that way. Having dealt with relatives with whom this was an open question, in the end, it's just hard to tell. After all, I knew those people when I was a toddler and started out believing that, like all adults, they were perfect. As I grew up and matured, I began to see serious questions of character and judgment. Did they emerge at just a certain age, or had they always been there?

Up to 2020, Biden's public profile had been a mediocre senator in a safe seat, and then vice president. The media never really focused on him, other than the plagiarism episode that ended his 1987 presidential bid, which was revealing in hindsight -- but nobody ever saw him as anything but a wannabe until he wasn't. My guess continues to be that he's always been that way.

It looks as though the Vatican made the best of a bad situation. But then, they have millennia of experience at doing just that. And don't neglect that the Vatican has the best intelligence operation anywhere, with agents in every town and village.

Just In Time For Halloween

I followed the deveopments in the BIF-Framework Democrat crisis in the House all day yesterday, but I found conservative media, aggregators, and blogs remarkably absent. The Hill, Politico, and NPR were, however, on the case, at least as far as individual developments were concerned. As of yesterday's post, things had just begun not to happen.

The problem was that on Wednesday, Speaker Pelosi had been unable to deliver on a House vote passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill. As a result, Thursday was represented as a last-ditch effort to pass it, either to give President Biden some sort of trophy to take to Glasgow, to give the party prestige going into the November 2 elections, or not to embarrass the president, or for the sake of his entire presidency. According to Politico,

President Joe Biden left Thursday for his second trip abroad with his massive domestic agenda -- and, by his own admission, his entire presidency -- hanging in the balance on Capitol Hill.

. . . "When the President gets off that plane, we want him to have a vote of confidence from this Congress," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told fellow Democrats in the meeting, stressing she wanted a vote on a bipartisan infrastructure package by the end of the day -- and imploring her her members "don't embarrass" Biden by voting down the package as he heads overseas.

According to The Hill,

In an exceptional interaction Thursday, Pelosi walked into a strategic meeting of the [Congressional Progressive Caucus], only to leave a short time later without speaking to the group.

[CPC Chair] Jayapal emerged not long afterwards to explain the group’s position. With a number of issues still unresolved in the social spending bill — and parts of the text yet to be written — Jayapal said liberals are sticking with their initial strategy, even if it means bucking leadership to delay the vote on the bipartisan infrastructure framework, often referred to as the BIF, until next week.

“There are ... too many 'no' votes for the BIF to pass today. However, we are committed to staying here until we get this Build Back Better Act done, get the legislative text,” Jayapal said after huddling in the basement of the Capitol with other members of the CPC.

Nevertheless, Pelosi waited intil very late in the day to delay the vote. Politico summed up,

THERE’S ALSO THIS LITTLE PROBLEM: BIDEN DIDN’T SELL IT. This entire episode looks similar to what happened in late September, when House Democratic leaders hoped Biden would come to the Hill and say to progressives: Vote for this damn BIF, and vote for it now.

But once again, he didn’t. And progressives picked up on that.

“He did not ask for a vote on the BIF today,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-Wash.) said right after the meeting. “The speaker did, but he did not. He said he wants votes on both bills."

The Hill summed up this morning:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) early Thursday evening delayed a vote on a separate $1 trillion infrastructure measure, despite having pushed hard to pass the measure earlier in the day.

The delay — the second postponement for the bill — was a rare exhibition of weakness from the Speaker, who prides herself on both her vote-counting abilities and her capacity to sway recalcitrant members of her caucus.

Wait a moment. "Rare exhibition of weakness"? She hasn't been able to get anything done since summer. The consensus is that the past week is just a replay of the end of September, when she had to delay precisely the same vote, calling on precisely the same Capitol visit from Biden, with precisely the same holdouts, despite weeks of precisely the same optimism on the Sunday talks. The establshment media is now saying she can maybe fix this somehow and try again next week. In other words, yet another do-or-die, last-ditch effort.

Except that with the "framework" for the BBB now in writing and key programs left out, it's Sen Sanders who's threatening to withdraw his Senate vote on the BBB. What's emerged this week is that neither Speaker Pelosi nor President Biden turns out to be capable of unifying the Democrats and delivering on promises. Meanwhile, they're wasting time and energy trying more do-overs, when it's increasingly plain that neither Pelosi nor Biden has the credibility to push the program forward.

What was that about doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result?

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.