Thread by @JakeSherman

In @PunchbowlNews this AM — We lay out a probable/plausible scenario for infrastructure based on where the Biden admin has been.

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Also going to do a *thread* here ….

@PunchbowlNews Q1: The Biden administration felt strongly that they needed to come out of the gate quickly with the American Rescue Plan. They knew it was big, and they knew it was expensive.

@PunchbowlNews And, frankly, they knew it probably wouldn’t get GOP support. But the White House was absolutely committed to nearly every policy proposal included in the bill -- many of which were in the House-passed Heroes Act last year.

@PunchbowlNews They got it through the Congress the only way possible: With arm twisting and only Democratic votes, thanks to reconciliation.

@PunchbowlNews Where Biden stands with Republicans: The Covid funding fight left Republicans feeling snubbed. We’ve been pretty consistent all along here that there was no deal between the Biden administration and the GOP on what became the ARP.

@PunchbowlNews But the senators that knew Biden during his Senate tenure came away thinking that White House staff was holding him back from a bipartisan deal. And Biden does deserve some blame for his rigidity in crafting the ARP.

@PunchbowlNews Privately, the administration and congressional Democrats admit that they were simply of a different mindset than Republicans. The most ambitious Republicans wanted $1.3 trillion at most, and Dems wanted nearly $2 trillion. Democrats saw no deal for them there.

Where Biden stands with Democrats: The ARP was a massive victory for progressives on nearly every front. We don’t need to take all your time listing the wins for the left in the bill; the dramatic expansion of child tax credit alone was a major policy shift.

There are still some Democrats who argue, quite surprisingly, that the White House could’ve done more for progressives here. The left on Capitol Hill says the administration should’ve allowed VP Kamala Harris to overturn the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling blocking a minimum wage

They want Biden to fully endorse blowing up the legislative filibuster. Never mind that neither proposal has a majority in the Senate.

Where Biden is going to go: The White House is now moving into a different phase: Standard-issue legislating. It plans to devote the next four to five months to infrastructure and various proposals including in the Build Back Better plan.

Top Democrats expect Congress will pass a number of infrastructure and public works bills through the summer and potentially into the fall.

Here is how it will work. At some point, the WH will lay out the big package it wants passed: A large scale infrastructure bill with a tax hike -- probably corporate, but they’ll pitch individual-rate increases too -- to pay for it. This will take time & energy to cobble together

But in the interim -- meaning throughout the spring and summer -- the White House plans to work with Congress to try to pass smaller pieces of legislation. It doesn’t know how many, but here is a flavor of the kinds of bills they hope to move …

A research and development bill, as well as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Endless Frontiers Act, which modernizes the National Science Foundation.

Small-bore, bipartisan bills that could be positioned as progress. The House will be able to clear these pieces of legislation, since Democrats have a majority. Some of these bills may get 60 votes in the Senate, some may fail.

idea is to create a political drumbeat for infrastructure & public-works related legislation bookended by the announcement of the large-scale bill at the front end & its passage on the back end -- w a bunch of incremental bills in btwn. A vote on a large-scale bill in summer/fall

Here’s where 🚨 comes: There’ll be a legislative pile up at the end of Sept. no matter what happens. The highway bill expires. A debt ceiling increase comes due and govt funding expires on Sept. 30. We expect a late-Sept cliff. A big one. A cliff will test this WH in a huge way

Pitfalls:

→ Progressives: Let’s just be perfectly clear here: We can’t envision a scenario in which the left doesn’t get let down in some way, shape or form. The left so desperately wants all Democratic D.C. to push through the Green New Deal, a $15-minimum wage and more.

These policies just simply can’t pass with the tight margins in the House and Senate. It’s not that elements within the administration don’t want them to pass -- they do -- but again, you have to work with the Congress you have, not the one you want.

The Senate isn’t blowing up the filibuster, and there aren’t 60 votes to hike the minimum wage or pass climate forward legislation as is.

→ Republicans: Biden’s got problems with Republicans -- there's no doubt about that. They think that Biden is being controlled by senior White House staff at best, or at worst, far more progressive than he was as a senator.

We’ll have to see if there is anything the two sides can do together in the next few months. There are Republicans willing to work with Biden -- Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to name a few. And if a proposal gets legs, maybe more Republicans jump on board.