Easiest/most obvious thing would be to have clear, public affirmation of this plan/sequence from Biden himself. Biggest point of contention to date has been who is truly advancing the interests of the Biden agenda and who is standing in the way.
Looked at the possibility of this maneuver in this week's note. Pelosi basically has to will her way past the various contradictory promises she made on all sides. And/but if she's made up her mind, and has WH sanction, hard to see progs blowing it all up. lpdonovan.substack.com/p/constant-bea…
Also think this thread from yesterday holds up as the case for moving ahead on this, even if they still have work to do.
We're at the point where BIF is useless (or worse) as leverage with the people you need to lever, so hard to see how sending the biggest bill possible over to the Senate wouldn't be at least as effective. At least puts the ball in their court, and means a base bill to work from.
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Provided this doesn't all blow up, this ends with mods net positive (BIF-BTU), Pelosi more or less breaking even by keeping all the balls in the air, and progs escaping with what's left of their dignity in the form of a $3.5T marker.
She's been cryptic enough (and generally enigmatic enough) that I get the freakout, but not sure why we take second hand, buried-lede assertions of Sinema's opposition to any tax hikes seriously while understand basically everything else at this stage is just posturing.
That's not to say they're assured to get much here, or that what they do get will be easy, but Sinema was always the toughest nut to crack. The credulous idea that she's impossible to move on a lesser corp rate hike but that this all gets held together by a carbon tax (eg) is 🤔.
Recurring theme of doomerism mixed with deus ex machina delusion despite the fact that almost nothing has changed in 3-4 mos.
Jayapal days no vote *on Monday*; Gottheimer says "early in the week." Pelosi resets the relevant clock to 9/30. This is all reasonably compatible if you squint.
Here's where the timeline gets interesting--Josh G suggests it comes up on Monday but no vote until later. So nominally keeping promise but buying more time to round up the votes and pin down the second track.
We knew as far back as August that final passage was not possible in September. The only way you could squint and make it work was figure progs would accept House passage. That made sense until Pelosi promised to spare Mods on anything w/o Senate approval. This amounts to a swap.
Mods got two things out if Pelosi in the last showdown: passage on 9/27, and "one vote" on a consensus package. With no consensus package coming any time soon, they essentially get to pick one or the other. (All of this assumes Progs fall in line.)
The original reason was because both sides were convinced the other was going to knife them the minute they got what they wanted. Pure MAD/leverage. At this point it's mostly an ego-driven impediment to resolving this, except as a futile tool to force Sinemanchin to bargain.
Problem is they picked the wrong hostage. Which I think at some level Pelosi knew and was trying to maintain some flexibility to pass BIF after showing nominal reconciliation progress.
The escalating string of impossible to keep promises is pretty wild. Do anything to get out of the next jam and worry about the one after that when it comes.
Not a shock given what Yarmuth teased, and probably necessary to have any shot at success on Monday, but even if it can be done, not (currently)!compatible with previous promises.
You're basically throwing a Hail Mary here and hoping that Manchin and Sinema even bother going up to catch it before it falls to the turf. And if they don't, can you even get to 218?