Nine Democrats Threaten to Blow Up Biden's Agenda

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi holds her weekly news conference with Capitol Hill reporters in Washington
GABRIELLE CROCKETT
By Yuval Rosenberg

It’s Friday the 13th, and a group of
moderate House Democrats is looking to put something of a scare
into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Here’s what you need to
know.

Nine Centrist Democrats Threaten to Blow Up Pelosi's Budget
Plan — and Biden's Agenda

A group of centrist House Democrats is threatening to derail
much of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda. In a letter to House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, nine moderates said they will withhold
support for a $3.5 trillion Democratic budget blueprint unless she
first allows a vote on the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure
package passed by the Senate this week.

“With the livelihoods of hardworking American families at stake,
we simply can’t afford months of unnecessary delays and risk
squandering this once-in-a-century, bipartisan infrastructure
package,” the moderates wrote. “It’s time to get shovels in the
ground and people to work. We will not consider voting for a budget
resolution until the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs
Act passes the House and is signed into law.”

The letter is signed by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Carolyn
Bourdeaux (GA), Filemon Vela (TX), Jared Golden (ME), Henry Cuellar
(TX), Vincente Gonzalez (TX), Ed Case (HI), Jim Costa (CA) and Kurt
Schrader (OR). But while Gottheimer is co-chair of the House
Problems Solvers Caucus, the threat could cause some real problems
for Democrats and President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.

Why it matters: Democrats have employed a two-track
strategy, aiming to pass both the $1 trillion bipartisan
infrastructure bill backed by moderates and a larger package
favored by progressives that focuses on social safety net programs
and combating climate change. Pelosi has insisted the House will
only take up the bipartisan bill after the Senate passes the
broader package. The strategy is meant to ensure that the moderate
and progressive wings of the party hold together, with each side
backing the bill supported by the other, but Democratic leaders are
walking a tightrope as various factions press their
priorities.

Democrats can only afford to lose three votes when the
House looks to pass a budget resolution later this month, a
critical step toward enacting the larger package. That means that
the nine Democrats threatening to withhold their votes could
scuttle a huge chunk of Biden’s agenda. Some moderates have
previously called on Pelosi to allow a stand-alone vote on the
bipartisan bill, but this is the first time the centrist lawmakers
have gone so far as to publicly say they’re willing to block the
budget resolution.

At the same time, progressives have issued their own
threat, with
dozens of progressives indicating they will
withhold their votes on the infrastructure bill until the Senate
adopts a reconciliation package — meaning that even if Pelosi were
to hold a quick vote on the bipartisan bill, it could very well
fail. “The important thing to me is to get both bills passed
and to the president,” Rep. Tom Malinowski, a moderate Democrat
from New Jersey, told
The Washington Post. “I fear that forcing a vote
now would undermine, not advance, that goal.”

What’s next: “Democrats have too much at stake to
let internal turmoil sink their domestic agenda,” Alan Fram of the
Associated Press
says, “but it was initially unclear how leaders
would resolve the problem. Biden, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader
Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who faces a similar moderates vs.
progressives balancing act in his chamber, may have to present a
united front about how to untie their knot and pressure
rank-and-file lawmakers into line.”

The White House said Friday that it’s confident that House
Democrats, like their Senate counterparts, will come together to
advance both parts of Biden’s economic agenda.

Biden Changes Emphasis as Inflation Worries Mount

The White House is changing the way it talks about its
economic agenda in response to growing public concerns about
inflation, The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein and Rachel Siegel

report Friday.

Although administration officials say they expect current
levels of inflation to be temporary, polling data suggests that
inflation could be a political problem for Democrats. As a result,
the White House has decided to tie President Biden’s policy
proposals to a broad theme of cost-cutting.

In a speech this week, Biden emphasized that his policies
— which include lowering drug prices, subsidizing child care and
providing free community college education — would help reduce
costs for American families.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki underlined the
point. Asked about Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) expressed concerns
that Biden’s plan to spend $3.5 trillion over 10 years on hard and
soft infrastructure risks increasing inflation, Psaki said that the
“Build Back Better agenda could also be called the ‘Cost-Cutting
Agenda for Working Families.’”

A White House official told the Post that the new approach
is also intended to counter Republican attacks on Biden’s agenda as
inflationary.

“They’re trying a new message: The message is, ‘We
understand there’s inflation, and the right way to get at it is to
invest in improving our supply chain, not pulling back on policy
support for the economy.’ That’s a smart message,” Julia Coronado,
president of Macropolicy Perspectives, told the Post. “If you can
relieve the pressure on these supply chains — not by hitting
demand, but by improving infrastructure — you’re basically lifting
the economy’s potential to meet that demand.”

FEMA Has Spent $1 Billion on Covid Funerals

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent more
than $1 billion to help cover the cost of funerals of those who
have died from Covid-19, the agency announced Friday.

Congress authorized FEMA to spend up to $2 billion on the
Covid-19 Funeral Assistance program as part of the $900 billion
pandemic relief bill passed in December and added another $50
billion to cover general coronavirus-related costs in the $1.9
trillion relief bill signed into law in March.

FEMA started accepting applications for funeral assistance
in April, and more than 150,000 people have received aid so far,
with another 90,000 applications pending. Applicants can receive up
to $9,000 per burial, with a $35,500 limit for those who have lost
multiple loved ones to the disease.

The agency has provided burial assistance in the past, but
at nowhere near this scale. “FEMA's Funeral Assistance program
allows us to provide funds directly to those who may be facing an
unexpected financial burden following the tragic loss of a loved
one,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said in a
statement, “and we are committed to providing this
assistance with the compassion, fairness, integrity, and respect
these families deserve.”

Number of the Day: 918,000

After peaking at over 3 million in mid-April, the number
of daily doses of Covid-19 vaccine started dropping in the U.S.,
falling to about half a million by early July. But the emergence of
the more transmissible delta variant has given new impetus to the
vaccination effort, and on Friday the Biden administration
announced that 918,000 doses has been administered, the highest
number in more than a month. “HUGE VACCINE DAY,” White House aide
Ben Wakana tweeted.

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