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Amid Democratic Infighting, Biden’s Domestic Agenda Hangs by a Thread

The events of the next four days on Capitol Hill will go a long way toward determining the ultimate success or failure of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, as four different legislative initiatives converge in a burst of frenetic policymaking. 

Congress must pass a budget resolution for the new fiscal year before Friday to avoid a partial shutdown of the federal government, and it must raise the limit on the Treasury Department’s authority to borrow money to avoid a catastrophic default on the country’s debts that could occur as soon as mid-October. 

At the same time, the Democratic Party is tearing itself apart internally with arguments over two additional bills that the president sees as vital to his agenda. 

“I don’t know whether everything is going to get resolved this week,” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “But there’s no question about the fact that the next week or two — or maximum three — are make-or-break for the Biden administration’s legislative agenda.” 

Democratic infighting 

The first of the two bills that Democrats are fighting over is a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill that has already passed the Senate with bipartisan support. The second is a much larger $3.5 trillion bill with tax credits and social spending that would forward multiple Democratic priorities, including efforts to address climate change, expand access to health care, address inequality, and more.

The problem is that the progressive wing of the party is promising to block passage of the infrastructure bill unless the social spending bill is passed first, and moderates are balking unless the infrastructure package is passed first and the cost of the social spending bill is slashed. 

Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington research organization, said the Democratic leadership in the House is in a position similar to the Republican leadership a decade ago. At that time, with the far-right Tea Party movement ascendant, Republican leaders faced a group on the party’s ideological fringe that was willing to scuttle the broader party’s goals to achieve their own, narrower objectives.

“It has historically been the case that when the speaker and the president of the Democratic Party say, ‘We’re going to do this now,’ the party gets in line,” said Grumet. Now, he said, “There is an open question, that will be somewhat resolved in the next few days, about whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden can, in fact, maintain cohesion in a very diverse Democratic Party.” 

And that covers only the House of Representatives. For the social spending bill to pass the Senate, Democrats would have to bring along all 50 of their members, including West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, both of whom have expressed serious doubts about the proposal.

Republicans filibuster funding bill 

Senate Republicans complicated the process on Monday night by using a legislative tool — the filibuster — to kill a House-passed bill that would have funded the government into December and suspended the debt ceiling restrictions on Treasury borrowing until December 2022. Their aim is to force Democrats to use a process known as “budget reconciliation,” which is immune to the filibuster, to raise the debt ceiling using only Democratic votes. 

Lawmakers in both parties dread having to raise the debt ceiling for fear of being criticized for reckless spending.

Democrats, however, want Republicans to participate in the debt ceiling vote, because the measure would help defray the costs of spending bills and tax cuts passed when the GOP held power. 

Additionally, Democrats had planned to use budget reconciliation to pass the $3.5 trillion social spending bill. But adding an urgent debt ceiling increase complicates that bill significantly and greatly compresses the time that Democrats would have to work on it. 

Filibuster as cudgel 

The stakes are particularly high because after a reconciliation bill is passed, Republicans will be in a position to block most future Democratic initiatives. That’s because budget reconciliation can typically be used only once per budget cycle, leaving Republicans able to filibuster — and thereby kill with unlimited debate — any further Democratic bills. 

Democrats, who control the 100-member Senate with 50 votes plus the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris, would need 10 Republican senators to join them to achieve a 60-vote supermajority required to end a filibuster — a near impossibility given the sharp partisan divisions on Capitol Hill.

Failure to secure the president’s objectives now could leave Democrats with nothing to show for two years of unified control of Congress. That would make an already difficult midterm election even more challenging. 

Historically, the party of a sitting president usually loses representation in Congress in midterm elections. With their tiny majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats were already facing the likelihood of losing control of one or both chambers in 2022.

Infrastructure vote postponed 

Speaker Pelosi, a California Democrat, had promised her party’s moderates a vote Monday on the $1 trillion infrastructure package. But, late Sunday night, she announced that the vote would be postponed until Thursday. 

Over the weekend, Pelosi also said the House would vote this week on the larger domestic policy bill — a piece of legislation that hasn’t been written yet because of the extensive intraparty disagreements over what ought to be in it and the price tag. 

House Democrats were scheduled to meet Monday night to find a way forward. 

If the party fails to bridge internal divides and misses the opportunity to enact historic domestic policy, it would likely seal Democrats’ fate, political experts assert. 

“If there isn’t a path to ‘yes’ that people are prepared to take, then the Democratic Party will have failed and will be seen by the American people as having failed,” said Galston, of the Brookings Institution. “And failure, plus a president with low job-approval numbers, is a formula for a political cataclysm in the midterms.” 

 
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US Senate Fails to Pass Government Funding, Debt Ceiling Measures

The U.S. Senate failed Monday to pass measures to avert a partial government shutdown and prevent a federal default at the start of a crucial legislative week that is highlighting the challenges facing the sharply divided Congress.

Republican lawmakers voted to oppose the bills Monday evening, forcing Democrats to look for other ways to keep the government open beyond Thursday and to raise the debt ceiling before the government is expected to default on its loans sometime in late October or early November.

The near party-line vote failed 48-50. Democrats narrowly control both Houses of Congress, but under Senate rules, 60 out of 100 votes are needed to pass most legislation in that chamber.

Republicans have said they want Democrats to lift the debt limit on their own, saying they do not support the Democrats’ multitrillion-dollar spending plans.

“We are not willing to help Democrats raise the debt ceiling while they write a reckless taxing and spending spree of historic proportions behind closed doors,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor Monday.

Democrats say much of the nation’s debt was incurred during the Trump administration. Historically, both parties have voted to raise the limit to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debts. 

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that the Republican action is “one of the most reckless and irresponsible votes I have seen take place in the Senate” and that “the Republican Party has solidified itself as the party of default.” 

McConnell said Republicans would support a bill funding the day-to-day operations of the government, which runs out of money after Thursday. Democrats, however, do not want to separate the government funding measure from the debt limit bill. 

In addition to the impasse on those measures, Congress is also at odds over a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill as well as a $3.5 trillion Democratic social spending and climate change bill.

The House of Representatives began debate Monday on the infrastructure bill ahead of a planned vote Thursday on the measure, which is a major part of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the dates in a letter to Democratic lawmakers Sunday. In television interviews, she expressed confidence the bill would pass.

“Let me just say that we’re going to pass the bill this week,” Pelosi said on ABC’s This Week.

The Senate approved the infrastructure plan in a vote last month that saw 19 Republicans join all 50 members of the Democratic caucus.

Progressive Democrats in the House, however, have tied the infrastructure bill to the larger $3.5 trillion social spending bill, which faces more opposition, including from some Senate Democrats who say they will not support that much spending.

House progressives say they won’t vote for the infrastructure bill unless there is progress on the social spending bill, while Democratic moderates say they may not vote on the larger spending bill until the infrastructure bill passes. 

Pelosi told ABC’s This Week that the negotiations would certainly result in a lower price tag for the social spending bill, calling such a development “self-evident.”

The $3.5 trillion proposal includes plans to provide universal prekindergarten instruction, free community college classes, expanded health care for older Americans, child care funding and money to combat the effects of climate change. It would also attempt to change immigration law and lower prescription drug prices.

The infrastructure spending, with nearly half of it in new government funding, would repair aging roads and bridges and expand broadband, pay for replacement of dangerous drinking-water systems that use lead pipes, add new sewer infrastructure, expand passenger rail and transit systems, and improve airports.

Biden has been meeting with fellow Democrats to ensure his legislative agenda passes. 

When asked what legislative success would look like, he told reporters Monday at the White House, “We’ve got three things to do: the debt ceiling, the continuing resolution and the two pieces of legislation. If we do that, the country’s going to be in great shape.” 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
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Democrats Negotiate on Spending Bills Key to Biden’s Domestic Agenda

A time of intensity. That’s what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, is calling this coming week in Congress as lawmakers are expected to vote on a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, but also consider the Democrat-backed $3.5 trillion sweeping social spending package, core to the Biden administration agenda. Michelle Quinn reports.   

Produced by: Henry Hernandez 
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US House to Debate $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill 

The U.S. House of Representatives is due to begin debate Monday on a $1 trillion infrastructure bill ahead of a planned vote Thursday on the measure that is a major part of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the dates in a letter to Democratic lawmakers Sunday, and in television interviews she expressed confidence the bill will pass. 

“Let me just say that we’re going to pass the bill this week,” Pelosi said on ABC News’ “This Week” show.

She added that she would not bring a bill to the House floor for consideration unless it has enough support to pass. 

Biden also expressed confidence when asked about the bill, telling reporters Sunday “it’s going to take the better part of this week.”

The Senate approved the infrastructure plan in a vote last month that saw 19 Republicans join all 50 members of the Democratic caucus.

The infrastructure spending, with nearly half of it in new government funding, would repair aging roads and bridges and expand broadband, pay for replacement of dangerous lead-piped drinking water systems, add new sewer infrastructure, expand passenger rail and transit systems, and make airport improvements.

Pelosi said in her letter that House leaders are also working with the Senate and White House on a separate $3.5 trillion proposal involving social safety net and climate change programs. That measure includes plans to provide universal pre-kindergarten instruction, free community college classes, expanded health care for older Americans, childcare funding, money to combat the effects of climate change, and make immigration law changes and attempt to lower prescription drug prices.

But the larger bill, which advanced in the House Budget Committee on Saturday, faces more opposition, including from some Senate Democrats who say they will not support that much spending. 

Pelosi told ABC’s “This Week” that the negotiations would certainly result in a lower price tag, calling such a development “self-evident.” 

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
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House Panel OKs Democrats’ $3.5T Budget Bill 

Democrats pushed a $3.5 trillion, 10-year bill strengthening social safety net and climate programs through the House Budget Committee on Saturday, but one Democrat opposed the measure in an illustration of the challenges party leaders face in winning the near unanimity they’ll need to carry the sprawling package through Congress. 

The Democratic-dominated panel, meeting virtually, approved the measure on a near party-line vote, 20-17. Passage marked a necessary but minor step for Democrats by edging the bill closer to debate by the full House. Under budget rules, the committee wasn’t allowed to significantly amend the 2,465-page measure, the product of 13 other House committees. 

The more important work has been happening in an opaque procession of mostly unannounced phone calls, meetings and other bargaining sessions among party leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers. President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have led a behind-the-scenes hunt for compromises to resolve internal divisions and, they hope, allow approval of the mammoth bill soon. 

Pelosi told fellow Democrats in a letter Saturday that they must pass the social and environment bill this week, along with a separate infrastructure bill and a third measure preventing a government shutdown on Friday. 

“The next few days will be a time of intensity,” she wrote.

Political vulnerability

Moderate Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., joined all 16 Republicans on the Budget Committee in opposing the legislation. His objections included one that troubles many Democrats: a reluctance to support a bill with provisions that would later be dropped by the Senate.

Many Democrats don’t want to become politically vulnerable by backing language that might be controversial back home, only to see it not become law. That preference for voting only on a social and environment bill that’s already a House-Senate compromise could complicate Pelosi’s effort for a House vote this week. 

Peters was among three Democrats who earlier this month voted against a plan favored by most in his party to lower pharmaceutical costs by letting Medicare negotiate for the prescription drugs it buys.

Party leaders have tried for weeks to resolve differences among Democrats over the package’s final price tag, which seems sure to shrink. There are also disputes over which initiatives should be reshaped, among them expanded Medicare, tax breaks for children and health care, a push toward cleaner energy, and higher levies on the rich and corporations. 

Democrats’ wafer-thin majorities in the House and Senate mean compromise is mandatory. Before the measure the Budget panel approved Saturday even reaches the House floor, it is expected to be changed to reflect whatever House-Senate accords have been reached, and additional revisions are likely. 

‘Decades of disinvestment’

The overall bill embodies the crux of Biden’s top domestic goals. Budget panel Chairman John Yarmuth, D-Ky., cited “decades of disinvestment” on needs like health care, education, child care and the environment as the rationale for the legislation. 

“The futures of millions of Americans and their families are at stake. We can no longer afford the costs of neglect and inaction. The time to act is now,” Yarmuth said. 

Republicans say the proposal is unneeded, unaffordable amid accumulated federal debt exceeding $28 trillion and reflects Democrats’ drive to insert government into people’s lives. Its tax boosts will cost jobs and include credits for buying electric vehicles, purchases often made by people with comfortable incomes, they said. 

“This bill is a disaster for working-class families,” said Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, the committee’s top Republican. “It’s a big giveaway to the wealthy, it’s a laundry list of agenda items pulled right out of the Bernie Sanders socialist playbook.”

The unusual weekend session occurred as top Democrats amp up efforts to end increasingly bitter disputes between the party’s centrist and progressive wings that threaten to undermine Biden’s agenda.

 A collapse of the measure at his own party’s hands would be a wounding preview to the coming election year, in which House and Senate control are at stake.

Infrastructure bill

To nail down moderates’ support for an earlier budget blueprint, Pelosi promised to begin House consideration by Monday of another pillar of Biden’s domestic plans: a $1 trillion collection of roadway and other infrastructure projects. Pelosi reaffirmed this week that the infrastructure debate would begin Monday.

But many moderates who consider the infrastructure bill their top goal also want to cut the $3.5 trillion social and environment package and trim or reshape some of its programs. Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have been among the most visible centrists demanding a smaller price tag. 

In response, progressives — their top priority is the $3.5 trillion measure — are threatening to vote against the infrastructure bill if it comes up for a vote first. Their opposition seems likely to be enough to scuttle it, and Pelosi hasn’t definitively said when a vote on final passage of the infrastructure measure will occur.

With each portion of the party threatening to upend the other’s most cherished goal — a political disaster in the making for Democrats — top Democrats are using the moment to accelerate talks on the massive social and climate legislation. Compromise is a requirement, because the party can lose no votes in the Senate and a maximum of three in the House to succeed in the narrowly split Congress.
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Republican Review Finds No Proof Arizona Election Stolen from Trump

A Republican-backed review of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona’s largest county ended Friday without producing proof to support former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election.

After six months of searching for evidence of fraud, the firm hired by Republican lawmakers issued a report that experts described as riddled with errors, bias and flawed methodology. Still, even that partisan review came up with a vote tally that would not have altered the outcome, finding that Biden won by 360 more votes than the official results certified last year.

The finding was an embarrassing end to a widely criticized, and at times bizarre, quest to prove allegations that election officials and courts have rejected. It has no bearing on the final, certified results. Previous reviews by nonpartisan professionals that followed state law found no significant problem with the vote count in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix.

Still, for many critics, the conclusions reached by the firm Cyber Ninjas and presented at a hearing Friday underscored the dangerous futility of the exercise, which has helped fuel skepticism about the validity of the 2020 election and spawned copycat audits nationwide.

“We haven’t learned anything new,” said Matt Masterson, a top U.S. election security official in the Trump administration. “What we have learned from all this is that the Ninjas were paid millions of dollars, politicians raised millions of dollars and Americans’ trust in democracy is lower.”

‘They are trying to scare people’

Other critics said the true purpose of the audit may have already succeeded. It spread complex allegations about ballot irregularities and software issues, fueling doubts about elections, said Adrian Fontes, a Democrat who oversaw the Maricopa County election office last year.

“They are trying to scare people into doubting the system is actually working,” he said. “That is their motive. They want to destroy public confidence in our systems.”

The review was authorized by the Republican-controlled state Senate, which subpoenaed the election records from Maricopa County and selected the inexperienced, pro-Trump auditors. On Friday, Senate President Karen Fann sent a letter to Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich, urging him to investigate issues the report flagged. However, she noted the review found the official count matched the ballots.

“This is the most important and encouraging finding of the audit,” Fann wrote.

Trump issued statements Friday falsely claiming the results demonstrated “fraud.”

Despite being widely pilloried, the Arizona review has become a model that Trump supporters are pushing to replicate in other swing states where Biden won. Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general sued Thursday to block a GOP-issued subpoena for a wide array of election materials. In Wisconsin, a retired conservative state Supreme Court justice is leading a Republican-ordered investigation into the 2020 election, and this week threatened to subpoena election officials who don’t comply.

None of the reviews can change Biden’s victory, which was certified by officials in each of the swing states he won and by Congress on Jan. 6 — after Trump’s supporters, fueled by the same false charges that generated the audits, stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent certification of his loss.

The Arizona report claims a number of shortcomings in election procedures and suggests the final tally still could not be relied upon. Several claims were challenged by election experts, while members of the Republican-led county Board of Supervisors, which oversees elections, disputed claims on Twitter.

“Unfortunately, the report is also littered with errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County conducted the 2020 General Election,” county officials tweeted.

Election officials say that’s because the review team is biased, ignored the detailed vote-counting procedures in Arizona law and had no experience in the complex field of election audits.

‘The Senate’s contractors don’t understand election processes’

Two of the report’s recommendations stood out because they showed its authors misunderstood election procedures — that there should be paper ballot backups and that voting machines should not be connected to the internet. All Maricopa ballots are already paper, with machines only used to tabulate the votes, and those tabulators are not connected to the internet.

The review also checked the names of voters against a commercial database, finding 23,344 reported moving before ballots went out in October. While the review suggests something improper, election officials note that voters like college students, those who own vacation homes or military members can move to temporary locations while still legally voting at the address where they are registered.

“A competent reviewer of an election would not make a claim like that,” said Trey Grayson, a former Republican secretary of state in Kentucky.

The election review was run by Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, whose firm has never conducted an election audit before. Logan previously worked with attorneys and Trump supporters trying to overturn the 2020 election and appeared in a film questioning the results of the contest while the ballot review was ongoing.

Logan and others involved with the review presented their findings to two Arizona senators Friday. It kicked off with Shiva Ayyadurai, a COVID-19 vaccine skeptic who claims to have invented email, presenting an analysis relying on “pattern recognition” that flagged purported anomalies in the way mail ballots were processed at the end of the election.

Maricopa County tweeted that the pattern was simply the election office following state law.

“‘Anomaly’ seems to be another way of saying the Senate’s contractors don’t understand election processes,” the county posted during the testimony.

Logan followed up by acknowledging “the ballots that were provided for us to count … very accurately correlated with the official canvass.” He then continued to flag statistical discrepancies — including the voters who moved — that he said merited further investigation.

The review has a history of exploring outlandish conspiracy theories, dedicating time to checking for bamboo fibers on ballots to see if they were secretly shipped in from Asia. It’s also served as a content-generation machine for Trump’s effort to sow skepticism about his loss, pumping out misleading and out-of-context information that the former president circulates long after it’s been debunked.

In July, for example, Logan laid out a series of claims stemming from his misunderstanding of the election data he was analyzing, including that 74,000 mail ballots were recorded as received but not sent. Trump repeatedly amplified the claims.Logan had compared two databases that track different things.

Arizona’s Senate agreed to spend $150,000 on the review, plus security and facility costs. That pales in comparison to the nearly $5.7 million contributed as of late July by Trump allies.

Maricopa County’s official vote count was conducted in front of bipartisan observers, as were legally required audits meant to ensure voting machines work properly. A partial hand-count spot check found a perfect match.

Two extra post-election reviews by federally certified election experts also found no evidence that voting machines switched votes or were connected to the internet. The county Board of Supervisors commissioned the extraordinary reviews in an effort to prove to Trump backers that there were no problems. 
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Biden Won’t Shield Trump Records From House’s January 6 Inquiry

President Joe Biden will not invoke executive privilege to shield former President Donald Trump’s records in relation to an investigation into the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday. 

“The president has already concluded that it would not be appropriate to assert executive privilege,” Psaki said. “And so, we will respond promptly to these questions as they arise.” 

The U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee investigating the deadly January 6 riot at the Capitol has subpoenaed four former members of Donald Trump’s administration, including Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon, the panel’s chairman said on Thursday. 

A mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6 as Congress was meeting to certify Democrat Biden’s presidential election victory, delaying that process for several hours as then-Vice President Mike Pence, members of Congress, staff and journalists fled from rioters. 

Trump said he would fight the subpoenas “on executive privilege and other grounds.” 

Executive privilege allows the White House to refuse to comply with demands for records such as congressional subpoenas or Freedom of Information Act requests. The legal principle is rooted in the idea that some privacy should be given to presidential advisers so they can have candid discussions. 

A sitting president has in the past used executive privilege to keep records and communications from an earlier administration secret, but it is rare. 

With Biden nixing executive privilege, it was widely expected that Trump would file a legal challenge. 

Representatives for the former president were not immediately available for comment.
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Experts: Biden Foreign Policy Troubles Linked to Domestic Focus

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is defending President Joe Biden’s foreign policy record as the administration faces pressure over its handling of Haitian migrants on the U.S. border, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and a nuclear submarine deal with Australia that angered France. VOA’s senior diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine has more. 

Produced by: Kim Weeks
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Arizona County Says Cyber Ninjas Election Review Shows Biden Win

Arizona’s most populous county has confirmed that a draft report of a partisan audit of its vote count in the 2020 presidential election declares Joe Biden as the winner.

The report by Cyber Ninjas, a little known Florida-based cybersecurity company, shows Maricopa County’s result in November was correct, the county tweeted late Thursday.

“The #azaudit draft report from Cyber Ninjas confirms the county’s canvass of the 2020 General Election was accurate and the candidates certified as the winners did, in fact, win,” it wrote.

The conclusion, which is expected to be released publicly Friday, effectively ends the discredited Republican-led bid to throw out Biden’s victory there in favor of former president Donald Trump.

Maricopa County did not publish the draft report and Cyber Ninjas did not immediately respond to an AFP request.

Biden’s victory in the key Arizona county was the first by a Democratic presidential nominee in decades.

Trump supporters and organizations who claim he was cheated out of an election win, including some who have also peddled wild conspiracy theories, funded the review to the tune of millions of dollars.

Since his crushing election defeat, Trump has resurfaced to criticize his successor.

In July, at his first campaign-style rally since leaving the White House, he repeated the lie that he won November’s election and that Biden prevailed only through fraud.

Trump, who has been booted from social media and was impeached for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol, may yet seek reelection in 2024 but has not announced his plans. 

 
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