Lenin Nolly/NurPhoto via AP
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks about the infrastructure and budget legislation during her weekly press conference, September 23, 2021, on Capitol Hill.
Nancy Pelosi has made her decision, and soon the Progressive Caucus will make theirs. With few options to corral practically her entire caucus and get the bipartisan infrastructure bill (BIB) over the line in a Thursday vote, Pelosi is now attempting to de-link that bill from the Build Back Better Act, which contains the vast majority of the Biden agenda.
For months, Pelosi has insisted on a “two-track” strategy of infrastructure and Build Back Better, with both passing together to ensure that everyone gets something they want. That position has changed, most directly in a caucus meeting Monday night, where the Speaker said that the House can no longer wait for the Senate to pass Build Back Better, and must instead advance the infrastructure bill to the president’s desk this week, while negotiations on the larger bill continue.
This new strategy is in direct conflict with at least 23 Progressive Caucus members, who have vowed publicly to vote against infrastructure without that Senate passage. Caucus leaders claim that another two dozen members will vote with them; even the 23 publicly named members would be enough to reject the bill. Something, then, has to give.
But to coerce progressives, Pelosi is making a very misleading argument, one that flies in the face of recent congressional experience. She has intimated in recent letters to the Democratic caucus, and said directly in the meeting on Monday, that the infrastructure bill must pass before the expiration of a key authorization that allows federal highway funds to flow to the states.
This gets a little complicated, but the bipartisan infrastructure bill is actually two bills. The first part is an array of new spending totaling about $550 billion on roads, bridges, electric grids, broadband, climate resilience projects, and other initiatives, part of which is offset by mostly budget gimmicks. The second part is a routine surface transportation reauthorization, which allows the government to collect gas taxes for the Highway Trust Fund, and use that money to support numerous highway and transit projects. (This is why this bill is called a “$1 trillion” bill, even though nearly half of the spending is just what the government always does for transportation infrastructure.)
To coerce progressives, Pelosi is making a very misleading argument, one that flies in the face of recent congressional experience.
That surface transportation authorization expires on Thursday. Pelosi set that date purposefully, to try to pressure wayward members by threatening an eventual cutoff of highway funding and furloughs of federal workers if they vote down the bill. But the only person who would be responsible for that, if it happens, would be Nancy Pelosi.
Surface transportation reauthorization has expired before for short periods of time. It would certainly be undesirable. But Congress can easily extend the current authorization on a short-term basis, until negotiations on a new authorization conclude. That mirrors the situation right now, as negotiations on the broader Biden agenda are ongoing.
How common is it to do a short-term extension? Extremely. Per a Hill source, the Congressional Research Service has identified 28 different short-term extensions of surface transportation authority since 2003, a rate of over one per year.
There’s even a vehicle for the extension, one with the same deadline date: the continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government. The House passed their government funding bill last week, but it was paired with a suspension of the debt limit, and last night, Senate Republicans voted against it. Even Louisiana’s two Republicans voted against a bill that included hurricane relief for their states. Mitch McConnell’s caucus is simply not going to provide votes to resolve the debt limit, at least not this week.
Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have insisted that they would advance legislation to fund the government before it expires, also on Thursday, September 30. That means the House is going to have to pass another CR before that date. Pelosi can simply attach a short-term surface transportation reauthorization to the CR; as no Democrat wants to see highway funding expire, that would almost surely pass.
Now, would McConnell allow a government funding bill to advance with the surface transportation piece? Well, he’s on the record saying that Republicans “will support a clean continuing resolution that will prevent a government shutdown.” Failing to extend surface transportation authority, which McConnell himself voted for in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, would shut down at least one part of the government. And McConnell has 49 other members who wouldn’t want to see highway and transit funding wind down in their states and their constituents get furloughed, either. If McConnell wants to be personally responsible for stopping highway funding, that’s on him. I doubt he’d be able to keep ten Senate Republicans from moving it along.
Speaker Pelosi’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the ability to do a short-term extension of surface transportation authority.
Pelosi is in a bad spot. She made a promise to progressives to keep the two bills linked, and a promise to Wall Street Democrats led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) to give the infrastructure bill a vote this week. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s refusal to negotiate on the broader agenda or even a topline spending figure has run out the clock on the House, and forced Pelosi to break one promise.
Given past experience, breaking the promise to progressives is a good bet; they’ve been known to cave in the past. But this is a different caucus with different leadership, which has been quite steadfast that they need a guarantee on Build Back Better before moving on infrastructure. They see the components of Build Back Better as desperately necessary, and don’t accept an infrastructure bill sliced in half by Republicans, which funds a lot of fossil fuel infrastructure, as a substitute.
The Progressive Caucus leadership released a CNN op-ed just on Monday, restating their demands and condemning the corporate lobbyists trying to stop the Biden agenda. “We aren’t bluffing,” caucus whip Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) tweeted after the Pelosi meeting on Monday night. Progressives rolling over would certainly not be unprecedented, but they’ve made very public promises for months. At this point, the credibility of the Progressive Caucus is at stake if they swallow what Pelosi’s trying to feed them.
It becomes easier for progressives if Pelosi makes untrue claims, and if the party’s conservatives don’t give them even a fig leaf of a guarantee. Pelosi said over the weekend, “I’m never bringing a bill to the floor that doesn’t have the votes.” And walking over progressives to get those votes has been her one strategy, practically since she became Speaker. It might not work this time.
