Thread by @ChadPergram

1) “Legislative fatigue” could hinder President Biden and Congressional Democrats in their quest to pass a multi-trillion infrastructure bill.

2) Democrats and Republicans spent trillions of dollars last year on coronavirus relief. Democrats just spent $1.9 trillion on their own COVID bill over the winter.

Presidents and lawmakers only have so much political capital when they come into office.

3) President Biden and Democrats incinerated a lot of that capital on the coronavirus measure. But, a long-drawn out slog on a gigantic infrastructure bill could reveal Democratic fissures – especially when dealing with narrow majorities in the House and Senate.

4) Democrats can only do it if they stay together. And what happens if conservative Democrats balk at the bill? Or, if liberal Democrats balk? Some of that is already happening.

5) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) demanded a more expensive infrastructure bill during her town hall meeting this week.

6) Passing the infrastructure bill will be a grind. There was initial talk about finishing it before Memorial Day. Now July 4 is on the radar. A more realistic estimate is seven to eight months.

7) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused to give a timetable today. The Speaker simply said she would advance the package when it’s “ready.”

This is the realpolitik of this plan. It’s a massive undertaking.

8) Perhaps the biggest Congressional lift since FDR’s New Deal programs of the 1930s. And Democrats can only spare three votes on their side and still pass the bill without GOP assistance in the House. The Senate is split 50/50. Getting Democrats to stick together will be tough

9) In fact, this lengthy process may resemble the minefield Democrats faced passing Obamacare in 2009 and 2010. The mechanics in the committees began in the spring of 2009. The House approved the first version of the bill in November, 2009.

10) The Senate, on Christmas Eve morning in 2009. The House and Senate didn’t pass the final, unified version of the bill until March, 2010.

Or, there are parallels to the tinderbox Democrats encountered when they tried to pass a health care measure in 1993 and 1994.

11) Republicans assembled a near-united front to oppose the health care package. Congressional Democrats were all over the place on the health care proposal. They already voted for a $16.3 billion economic stimulus package (sounds quaint, no?)

12) in early 1993. Then came a complex deficit reduction package, stocked with tax increases and new tax brackets. Democrats approved that bill 219-213 in the House and 50-49 in the Senate.

Congressional Democrats were spent when it came to health care

13) Democrats could be encountering legislative fatigue now. They cranked out six major bills to address the pandemic, culminating in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus package a month ago. The magnitude of this infrastructure package could enhance that fatigue.

14) Here’s the problem for Democrats: they could face internal opposition from moderates if the bill is too big. If they give away progressive policies, they lose liberals.

15) The potential solution is really scale the bill down and assemble together a truly bipartisan plan, focused on old-fashioned infrastructure. Roads. Bridges. Highways. But it’s unclear if Republicans would even assist with that.

16) President Clinton burned his political capital too early in his term for a health care bill. President Obama nearly did the same thing, passing a stimulus package early in his term.

17) Lawmakers were already reeling from approving the TARP bill to rescue the economy in the fall of 2008. That’s why passage of Obamacare was such an epic lift.

18) Even FDR experienced problems advancing the New Deal. Many of his loyalists in Congress dropped off of other New Deal initiatives in the late 1930s.