Amy Walter:
But, look, Tam is exactly right.
The reality for getting both of these through is still there. You still have Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Pelosi, saying, we absolutely must have a reconciliation bill — that is likely a Democrats-only bill that has the extra funding for things like education, childcare, climate — before we go and pass something like a bipartisan infrastructure bill.
We talk a lot about the memories of the last time there was a Democratic president and Democrats were in charge. And there were many Democrats, for example, who voted for something with the intention of seeing it voted on the Senate, only to be told that, whoops, we don’t have the votes in the Senate.
So they want to be very clear on the House side that they’re going to get what they ask for. The other big road bump is, of course, the 50/50 Democratic Senate. And already we have seen that Joe Manchin’s name again is front and center.
He has come out and said he likes the idea of supporting another big-spending domestic program, but not at the rate, not the cost that Senator Bernie Sanders is suggesting, somewhere close to $6 trillion. So, this number is going to be moving around a great deal between now and the end of the summer.
It just means that there’s a lot of this very delicate work that needs to get done over the summer. Traditionally, this is when members like to go home. They’re not really used to working over the summer recess. And, again, the closer we get to the end of the year, the harder it gets.
Members start to focus on their reelections. We’re going to hear more about redistricting. The politics are going to start getting in the way. They really want to try to move this as quickly as possible
