Sept. 16, 2021: Moderates fear Pelosi hanging them out to dry

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POLITICO

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🗓️ 16 September 2021

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a deal with about a dozen skeptical House moderates In late August to win their support on the party’s $3.5 trillion budget. If they backed the fiscal blueprint, Pelosi promised two things. One was to hold a vote on the bipartisan, $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill by Sept. 27, a sweetener for those members eager to campaign on the policy win. The other promise was less straightforward but no less important: Rather than the House and Senate drafting and voting on separate sweeping reconciliation bills, she agreed to figure out the contours of the social spending package with her Senate counterparts on the front end, ensuring any bill that passes the House would have 51 votes to clear the upper chamber. Now, however, some moderates are increasingly concerned that Pelosi and her team are playing fast and loose with that commitment. They worry that Democratic leaders are charging ahead with their own expansive version of the reconciliation package without getting on the same page with the Senate first — and making them walk the plank in the process. Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio. Subscribe to POLITICO Playbook

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, good morning Playbookers. I'm Rugu Monovalin. It's Thursday, and this is your Politico Playbook Daily Briefing.
0:12.1	All righty. Here's today's edition of Fun with Numbers. Where do you think President Joe Biden's average approval rating stands right now?
0:19.2	Here's a hint, according to 538 at this point in their
0:21.9	prospective presidencies, some 239 days in. George W. Bush was at 82.6%. Barack Obama came in at
0:29.8	53.4%. And Donald Trump was at 38.8. All right. So Joe Biden's average approval rating,
0:36.7	46%. For what it's worth, that was also
0:39.6	Gerald Ford's approval rating at this point in his presidency. And if the current trend holds,
0:44.3	it could be headed further downward. Amid a busy fall agenda, Politico's Burgess Everett and
0:51.3	Laura Barone Lopez take a look at how democratic lawmakers
0:54.5	are urging Biden to get more directly involved with reconciliation, the debt ceiling, and government funding bills.
1:01.7	Senator Dick Durbin had this to say, quote,
1:04.4	there is no comparable political force to a president, and specifically Biden at this moment.
1:10.3	Almost on cue, a White House official offered us this preview of Biden's speech today.
1:15.1	He'll argue that we don't need to reduce the cost of being rich in America.
1:18.6	We need to lower the cost of raising a child, of prescription drugs,
1:21.7	of taking care of an aging parent, of health care, of high-speed internet, and of hearing aids.
1:26.9	For those keeping score,
1:28.0	almost every one of those Biden priorities is currently under threat by intrademned party conflicts.
1:36.2	Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a deal with about a dozen skeptical House moderates in late August
1:41.1	to win their support on the party's $3.5 trillion budget.
1:45.0	If they backed the fiscal blueprint, Pelosi promised two things.
1:49.0	One was to hold a vote on the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill by September 27th.
	...

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