The State of Reconciliation as Washington Dangles an Axe Blade Above It
With a desire to get it done by the end of the month, corporatists and lack of leadership continue holding the reconciliation bill down in order for it to be substantially trimmed.
With the unanimous desire to get both of the two big bills passed by the end of October and the incessant will of big money lobbyists to protect profits paired with politicians in the midst of trying to cash in, the reconciliation bill lies prostrate on a chopping block, awaiting the cracking clap of the axe blade falling against the hardwood. Though it's not declared dead and may not be destined to death, the bill will suffer the fate of being a mangled version of its former self.
The agreement, made months ago, was to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill (BIF) and the highly transformative budget reconciliation bill at the same time. This was put in peril as Pelosi came to another agreement with House "moderates" led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer to an arbitrary deadline to pass the BIF in late September which ultimately arrived without a vote.
The missed "deadline" initiated a week of chaos as Congress juggled the two bills, a potential shutdown, and a debt ceiling catastrophe.
That week eventually subsided for the time being. The shutdown was avoided, the debt ceiling matter kicked down the road, and the progressives continued to hold the line on their commitment to passing both bills as a couple and extended the clock on the battle until the end of the month.
With the extra time, Washington got to work with what it seemed so eager to do: hack away at the damn thing. The reconciliation bill, that is.
One of the major roadblocks to coming to any kind of compromise that wouldn't be deemed a near-complete sacrifice comes from the unwillingness of corporatist Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Both are frequently cantankerous regarding any discussion of the reconciliation bill, particularly the most proactive climate provisions, the Medicare drug pricing negotiations that would lower costs of prescriptions, and the tax increases on wealthier people in order to pay for it. In fact, the senators haven't made it exactly clear what they want, and Sinema, in particular, has been especially ambiguous and taciturn.
It was reported this past week that the White House was so impatient with this lack of compromise and communication that they were signaling that, to them, essentially anything will do at this point.
A White House source indicated the president feels all parties involved in negotiations are acting in good faith and that these talks will conclude "soon" so the administration can move on. There was no scent of specific leadership or sign of what he wants the reconciliation bill to look like, on what's included and excluded, but rather just the demand that this messy situation get neatly folded away with the approval of completing something, even if that something is a transformative bill stripped of its ability to transform.
Manchin wants it to be no more than $1.5 trillion, Sinema is still silent on a number, and the White House has been in favor of something in the $1.9 trillion to $2.3 trillion range. Pramila Jayapal, head of the House Progressive Caucus, has declared these numbers far "too low" and progressives are continuing to advocate for something "closer to three" trillion.
Despite all the phony outrage about how much the reconciliation bill spends, Jayapal clarifies and casts those concerns aside, noting that the $3.5 trillion price tag is over the course of 10 years and that Biden is for that number. "Per year," she said on MSNBC, "it's 1.5% of GDP, so the president is with us."
Indeed, the reconciliation bill will cost a fraction of this country's GDP and significantly less than what the overall defense budget and the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts are ultimately costing the nation.
The president has not been convincing in his determination to pass the full $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill despite its transformative components. He may want the full $3.5 trillion, but he seems completely unwilling to use his executive position to twist the arms of Manchin and Sinema, who are the biggest obstacle to the reconciliation bill.
Manchin and Sinema aren't just in the way, they make it even more difficult, as Jayapal pointed out, in that the two of them differ on what they are specifically demanding. They seem to have different priorities.
And with their two sets of priorities, with their two sets of fangs, they are ready to tear up some of their least favorite aspects of the reconciliation bill that also happen to be the most transformational.
We'll start with Sinema— you know, because if we start with Manchin, by the time we're finished, Sinema may be nowhere to be found, likely indulging on cocktails with donors at luxury resorts or busting ass to ditch D.C. for a European fundraising trip.
Along with dragging her colleagues along through a game of charades that she intends to keep playing even as nobody can guess the number she has in mind, Sinema has also been the largest threat to the prescription drug pricing reform that would allow Medicare to use its purchasing power in order to make the costs cheaper.
A month ago, Politico reported that Sinema had told Biden she was "opposed" to the drug pricing reform. This, as The Daily Poster reported, coincided with an ad campaign in Arizona funded by a pharmaceutical-backed dark money group that praised her "independence." The Poster also indicated in recent reporting that in Quarter 3, i.e. between July and September, Sinema received over $100,000 from pharma companies alone. And just for context, in that quarter she cashed in on over a million dollars in total campaign funds, in a time when the negotiations were in their most formative stages.
It's safe to say that Sinema is married to her loyalty to Big Pharma, even as she campaigned on cutting prescription drug prices.
The drug pricing reform would be a huge break for ordinary Americans and would certainly be one of the most immediate material changes felt by the public, which would ultimately aid Democrats in their case for the midterms and Biden in his ratings. Even so, there is no sign of leadership being utilized in this matter, which is equally odd and frustrating.
Unfortunately, this is not surprising that the administration would roll over on the prescription drug issue given that the current Health and Human Services Secretary, Xavier Becerra, despite past pleas, is not currently using the tools available to cut drug prices. The main tool in question is "march-in rights" where the federal government has the ability to license patented products to different manufacturers if the said product got any government funding.
On the 2020 campaign trail, Biden promised to cut drug prices by 60%. In the previous administration, Becerra, as California Attorney General at the time, signed a letter promoting the use of march-in rights. And yet, there is no sign Democratic leadership would use such a tool, so there is very little hope in turning Sinema around.
Even Speaker Pelosi has signaled a weak will to preserve the drug pricing reform, saying she's "not sure" it will make it into the bill.
Of course, some have suggested Democrats could test if Sinema's bluffing by bringing a bill with the drug price reform still in tact in for a vote just to see if she would really follow through with defying a campaign promise in front of everyone. Whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but there's no sign it's worth betting on it.
The other prong of the fork currently in the reconciliation bill's ass cheek is, of course, Joe Manchin, that Roman-nosed coal emperor.
The Clean Energy Performance Program (CEPP) is a proposed initiative in the reconciliation bill, and is the core piece to the climate-focused facet of the legislation. What it would do is reward utility companies that increase clean energy supply by at least 4% a year while also penalizing companies that do not. It's imperative to the shift towards cleaner energy as groups like The Sierra Club have declared.
It is also very important for Biden's promises, specifically his vow to halve emissions by the end of the decade which depends heavily on a steadfast approach from the start. Even climate "czar" (whatever that means) John Kerry has advocated for how imperative the CEPP is to the fight against a changing climate and, moreover, to the adaptation towards cleaner technologies.
Joe Manchin, however, is totally against the CEPP, as The Washington Post reported.
The senator from West Virginia insisted this is all out of concern for his constituents and the state's economy, but as is almost so obvious that nobody seems to care, Manchin is only protecting his and his family's own wellbeing in taking this stance.
In early September, The Intercept reported on Manchin's loyalty to the coal industry, an industry he's had his hands all over well before his time in the Senate.
As Daniel Boguslaw wrote:
"For decades, Manchin has profited from a series of coal companies that he founded during the 1980s. His son, Joe Manchin IV, has since assumed leadership roles in the firms, and the senator says his ownership is held in a blind trust. Yet between the time he joined the Senate and today, Manchin has personally grossed more than $4.5 million from those firms, according to financial disclosures. He also holds stock options in Enersystems Inc., the larger of the two firms, valued between $1 and $5 million.
...
"Over the decades, whether feeding tens of thousands of tons of dirty waste coal into the power plants in northern West Virginia or subjecting workers to unsafe conditions, Manchin’s family coal business has almost entirely avoided public scrutiny."
The reasons behind Manchin's viewpoint are as clear as day— though, certainly not to all corporate media outlets who insist on pushing the infighting and internal discord narratives— and yet his opposition is still given free reign to wreck the climate-centric aspects without much condemnation from Democratic leadership.
Instead, last-minute alternatives are flying around all over the place. The main alternative being floated around is a far less demanding voluntary system among manufacturers of aluminum, steel, concrete, and chemicals that would result in federal funds to aid those companies in slowing pollution.
This is obviously not popular among the bulk of Democrats, and particularly the progressive caucus. For many Democrats, they need to display action on this particular issue to keep their voters happy.
Same can be said specifically of Biden because he ran, in part, on climate. But Manchin, stiff with fossil fuel cash protruding from every one of his pockets, may be too entrenched in his position to be swayed. It clearly looks that way as Biden continues to avoid applying specific pressure to Manchin, like Sinema.
Budget Committee Chair and frontman of the progressives, Bernie Sanders, wrote an op-ed for West Virginia's Charleston Gazette-Mail advocating for the reconciliation bill, which he said "begins the process of cutting carbon emissions and transforming our energy systems away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy."
Sanders noted the consistent public support and called out the two senators standing in the way, directly naming Manchin.
The country has seen a lot of advocacy thrown around either supporting the legislation or the senators standing in the way of it, and still, there has been little ship-steering and arm-twisting from the president. Sadly, with a few weeks remaining in the month, this all likely foreshadows the swinging motion of the axe that will come down and chop off significant components of the reconciliation bill.
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