Weekly Plurus Strategies Update on Infrastructure, Reconciliation, and Other Legislative Priorities for September
Happy recess once again! This week has been atypically busy with the House back in town in August and we’re already bracing for a crazy September. Here’s our weekly report with the latest on infrastructure, reconciliation, and the mounting legislative priorities that we anticipate will collide on the Congressional calendar this fall.
Infrastructure/Reconciliation
Earlier this week the House had us on pins and needles with the standoff between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the so-called “Mod Squad” over the sequencing of votes on the bipartisan infrastructure bill and reconciliation. On Tuesday afternoon, an agreement was finally reached between House Democratic leadership and ten moderate Members led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) to provide the votes needed to pass the $3.5 trillion budget resolution and unlock the reconciliation process in the House. However, Speaker Pelosi was reluctant to acknowledge that the divisions among House Democrats required a deal at all.
The budget resolution ultimately passed the House on a 220-212 vote. In order to avoid a showdown on the floor, Speaker Pelosi used a self-executing rule to avoid a direct roll call vote on the budget resolution, instead opting to deem it passed once the House adopted the rule for floor debate on the Senate-passed infrastructure bill and voting rights legislation. Simultaneously, Speaker Pelosi issued a statement committing to holding a vote on the infrastructure bill no later than September 27. President Joe Biden, who was personally making phone calls to Members ahead of Tuesday’s vote, was quick to applaud Speaker Pelosi for her masterful guidance of her caucus.
While cooler heads have prevailed for now, the tensions between moderates and progressives are likely to continue in the weeks ahead. In the wake of the Democratic infighting this week, House progressives continue to threaten to vote against the bipartisan infrastructure bill if it is brought to the floor before the Senate passes a reconciliation package that meets expectations for a robust topline and is inclusive of progressive priorities. Additionally, progressives were quick to point out that Speaker Pelosi’s statement promising an infrastructure vote by September 27 is not binding.
Progressives also continue to worry about how much influence Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) will have in the reconciliation process, given that they have been wary about supporting a package with a $3.5 trillion price tag. Sen. Manchin also issued a statement earlier this week siding with moderates and calling on House Democratic leadership to immediately put the bipartisan infrastructure bill on the floor for a vote. Sen. Sinema also reiterated this week that she is still opposed to a $3.5 trillion topline for reconciliation.
The budget resolution gives committees until September 15 to report legislation in response to reconciliation instructions, which is already an ambitious timeline. The task of cobbling together legislation from 12 Senate committees and 13 House committees, whipping it, conducting a Byrd bath, and ushering the bill through both chambers in less than five weeks is daunting, especially as both the House and Senate are scheduled to remain out of session until mid-September.
We continue to hear that the House is moving aggressively to advance its reconciliation package in hopes of exerting greater influence over the final legislation than it had in the bipartisan infrastructure negotiations. The House Natural Resources Committee has set their markup for September 2; the House Ways and Means Committee will hold their markup over several days on September 9, 10, 13, and 14; the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has set their markup for September 14; and the House Energy and Commerce Committee is targeting September 13 and 14 for their markup.
Acknowledging the tight margins for Democrats in both the House and Senate, Speaker Pelosi has been especially vocal in the past few days that the House will be drafting its reconciliation package in lockstep with the Senate in order to ensure the final vehicle can pass both chambers on a party line vote. However, we are hearing that Democrats in swing districts are still on edge about the House potentially passing a reconciliation package that is then scaled back by the Senate.
Our sense is that Speaker Pelosi will have to continue to walk a tightrope to hold the Democratic caucus together, especially as it remains unclear whether House Republican leadership will whip against the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will face his own challenges in the Senate to unify Members like Sens. Manchin and Sinema with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who will spend his recess on the road making the case for a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that expands healthcare coverage, addresses climate change, increases access to education, and promotes tax fairness.
At this point, we are skeptical that a reconciliation package will hit President Biden’s desk in September. While House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has said the goal is to pass both infrastructure and reconciliation by the end of next month, he has also made clear there is no deadline on the reconciliation package and it is possible that work on the reconciliation bill could slip into October. Of course, competing legislative priorities and a tight calendar do nothing to brighten the prospects for final passage of a reconciliation bill in September.
Other Legislative Priorities for September
Though infrastructure and reconciliation have been sucking up most of the oxygen in the room, there are a number of items Congress must address in September.
First, the end of the fiscal year is looming on September 30. While the House has passed nine of 12 Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22) appropriations bills, the Senate has only advanced three bills out of committee and none have moved on the floor. For months now, conventional wisdom has told us the delayed budget request meant we were likely headed towards a continuing resolution (CR). In all but three of the last 44 fiscal years, Congress has enacted at least one stopgap funding bill. We are anticipating that lawmakers will pass a CR until sometime in December in the coming weeks, but it remains to be seen if all 12 funding measures can be completed by the end of the year. While a year-long CR for at least some agencies cannot be ruled out, it is important to note that this path would leave Trump-era policies in place at a time when Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House.
It is possible that Congress also confronts the debt limit in September. We are increasingly hearing concerns that the Treasury Department may exhaust extraordinary measures that keep the U.S. Government from defaulting on its debt sometime in the next few weeks. Democrats continue to suggest their strategy will be to dare Republicans to vote against a suspension of the debt limit that is tacked on to a CR, while Republicans hold firm on their position against voting to raise the debt limit. We shudder to think that a government shutdown could hang in the balance.
With COVID infections once again surging due to the unvaccinated and the raging delta variant, a number of COVID relief programs are also due to expire in the coming weeks. For example, the increase in federal food benefits enacted in response to the pandemic is set to end on September 15 and the Biden Administration’s ban on evictions will lapse on October 3. In addition to the ongoing pandemic, the humanitarian and security crisis in Afghanistan also tops the news cycle.
In theory, Congress had also been hoping to pass the FY22 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) before the start of the new fiscal year. Defense staffers who we spoke with this week indicated that the House and Senate Armed Services Committees had previously been eyeing September for floor time, but the committees have now gone quite on the NDAA timeline given the storm that is brewing for September.
Voting Rights
On Tuesday, the House passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act on a party line 219-212 vote. The bill would make elections changes, including requiring federal approval for some state changes of voting practices and making it easier to challenge alleged discrimination voting practices in court. The bill would also create a new coverage formula to determine which states and local governments are subject to an approval process for voting changes based on previous discriminatory practices.
Despite the bill moving through the House and the support it has received from the Biden Administration, the chances of voting rights legislation moving through the Senate are slim while the filibuster remains in place. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has publicly questioned the need for such legislation, with members of the Republican conference falling in line. Regardless, we expect Democrats will continue to beat the drum for voting rights legislation. As chair of the Senate Rules Committee, we understand Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is using part of her August to travel the country to spread the Democratic message on voting rights.