In reconciliation debate, will the Democrats’ left wing ultimately fight or fold?

In reconciliation debate, will the Democrats’ left wing ultimately fight or fold?

Opinion by 

Perry Bacon Jr.

Columnist

Today at 3:45 p.m. EDT

Employing a high-risk, high-reward strategy, the most progressive Democrats in the House are trying to aggressively assert their power this week. The reward would be both advancing their policy goals and demonstrating that they have real clout. The risk is that they’ll be defeated in a way that validates the nagging critique that their outsize influence on Twitter and in left-wing circles rarely translates into victory at the ballot box or on Capitol Hill.

It’s a gamble they’re right to take.

The complicated back and forth underway around President Biden’s agenda basically comes down to this: Biden and Democratic leaders for months have been pushing two bills at once — an infrastructure bill that has the support of some Republican senators, pleasing more conservative Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), and a bill full of progressive policy priorities that Democrats would have to pass on a party-line vote through the filibuster-proof reconciliation process. The Senate has already approved the infrastructure bill, and the more conservative Democrats want Democrats to quickly pass it in the House so Biden can sign it into law. But progressives say that would threaten their policy goals by breaking with the two-bills strategy — once more conservative Democrats get the infrastructure bill through, they will either insist the reconciliation bill be shrunken dramatically or even withhold their support altogether.

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Bowing to pressure from her right flank, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) this week scheduled a vote on the infrastructure bill. But at least 25 progressive members of the House, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, have said they won’t vote for it unless Democrats have at least reached an informal deal on reconciliation. (That 25 is according to a whip count as of Wednesday afternoon by the American Prospect, the Daily Poster and the Intercept, three progressive publications.) Democrats have a tiny margin in the House, so 25 no votes would kill the infrastructure bill.

Because Biden supports the reconciliation bill, too, the progressives are making the somewhat complicated argument that they are trying to save his agenda by temporarily stalling it. But there are a lot of reasons why this strategy might fail.

More conservative Democrats might ultimately be fine with both bills dying, and this bloc of progressives might not have Biden in their corner (or at least not overtly against them) for much longer. With his poll numbers sagging, the president could lean hard on Democrats to push through the infrastructure bill in an effort to get something done — no matter the fate of the other one. That would severely weaken the progressives’ position. It is likely the infrastructure bill is popular in their districts, and bucking the incumbent president from their party would be unpopular back home.

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It’s also possible that both sides back down — the more conservative Democrats make clear they will support a reconciliation bill that includes many of the progressives’ goals, and progressives vote for the infrastructure bill. But for now, more conservative Democrats like Manchin aren’t making such promises.

By taking such a high-profile stand, the progressives risk three outcomes that would make them look weak. They might ultimately stand down and vote for the infrastructure bill this week without getting firm promises on passage of the reconciliation bill. They might back the infrastructure bill in the weeks ahead if Biden demands it. Or they might back the infrastructure bill based on a deal with conservative Democrats that then falls through.

Nonetheless, they are right to wage this fight. Why?

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Most important, because they are correct on the substance. Though improving America’s physical infrastructure is important, the big, game-changing policies in Biden’s agenda are in the reconciliation package, including major climate provisions, universal preschool, child tax credits and health-care expansions. Progressives are right to do everything possible to ensure that some of these policies are advanced, even if the process is messy.

Second, in electoral terms, the partisan package is full of ideas and policies that are memorable and exciting to voters in a way that improved roads will never be.

Finally, the progressives are politicians, and politics is about power. They need to show that they have some. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has done a great job moving the party to the left rhetorically, but Biden is president, not Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I). Progressives have lost in high-profile Democratic primaries in 2021. And now, more conservative Democrats in Congress could end up getting their bill passed while the progressives’ goals are left behind.

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In particular, this is a big fight for Congress’s most visible left-wing members. There are actually 95 House members in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, but this group of 25 is the most true-blue bloc of House Democrats. By contrast with House Democrats overall, these 25 are disproportionately under 50, non-White and fairly new to Congress. The group includes the original four-person “Squad,” plus other prominent left-wing members such as Missouri’s Cori Bush and California’s Katie Porter.

These members have gotten a lot of publicity. This week is a chance for them to show they have a lot of power, too.