Welcome to the 3-Martini lunch.

Grab a stool next to Greg Corumpus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review.

3-Martini's coming up.

Very happy to have you with us for the Wednesday edition of the 3-Martini lunch.

We have good, bad, and crazy Martini's for you today as usual.

And Jim, I know we keep saying eventually the Democrats are going to find a way to

agree to pass the reconciliation infrastructure, and that's probably still what's going to happen.

But whenever you see news that they're not really close on this thing, it makes a smile.

And for that, we turn to Punchbowl News, it's a relatively new organization.

But it's Jake Sherman and a couple other folks who have built up pretty strong reputations in Washington.

And they start off by saying, let's be blunt.

Democrats aren't close to a framework agreement on their massive reconciliation bill.

We've heard Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer talk about great progress, but are reporting.

And the available public evidence doesn't match these sunny claims.

Biden hoped to have the framework deal in place before he leaves for Rome on Thursday.

But without a big turnaround in the next 24 hours, that's not going to happen.

It also calls into question whether Pelosi and House Democratic leaders

can pass the infrastructure deal by their October 31st deadline.

The White House badly wants to clear the public works bill as do moderate house Democrats.

However, without the framework agreement, we're pretty sure it won't pass.

Pelosi says it should progressives say they'll continue to block it as they await a social spending deal.

There is some science that the progressives are getting a little bit of what they wanted,

...