Welcome to Beg to Bueg to Differ, the Bullworks weekly roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation

across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I'm

Mona Charon, syndicated columnist and policy editor at the Bullwork and I'm joined by our regulars

Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution in the Wall Street Journal, Damon Linker of

the Week, and Linda Chavez of the Niskanin Center. Our special guest this week week our return guest is AB Stoddard.

It's always great to have you AB welcome.

We will begin with the real tightrope that the Democrats are walking.

We're recording this on Thursday afternoon.

It seems that they have an agreement to extend the government funding, so to avoid a government

shutdown, but everything else is very much up in the air and Bill Galston I'm going to

start with you this would usually I let you back clean up and and you know make some magisterial comments about the state of the

world I'm going to start with you with one you, a couple of observations.

So a number of Democrats and Democratic leaning commentators

are making the point that progressives are asking for too much,

that they are from safe seats and the moderates are not,

and that furthermore, if to the bipartisan infrastructure bill,

if there is just so much in this reconciliation bill that they have linked to the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

There's so much in it that they have not at all made the case to the American people

that this is worth passing in its current form.

The messaging has all been about numbers.

You know, it's either 3.5 trillion is too much

or it's not enough, but there hasn't been anything

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