Live Updates: Biden Signs Bill to Avert Government Shutdown, and Manchin Calls for $2 Trillion Cut to Biden’s Social Spending Plan
"The president signed the short-term spending bill, which funds the government until early December. Senator Joe Manchin III, a key holdout on the president’s social policy and climate bill, said he would support less than half of what top Democrats have proposed.
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The biggest guessing game in the Capitol: When will Pelosi hold the infrastructure vote?
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Senate Votes to Avert Government Shutdown
The Senate passed a short-term spending bill to extend federal funding through early December, avoiding a government shutdown at midnight.
“Mrs. Blackburn, no.” “On this vote, the yeas are 65, the nays are 35. The 60-vote threshold having been achieved, the bill is passed.” Under the previous order, the Senate will proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the following nomination, which the clerk will report.”
Racing to avoid a government shutdown at midnight, President Biden signed a spending bill on Thursday evening that extends federal funding through early December and provides emergency aid to support both the resettlement of Afghan refugees and disaster recovery efforts across the country.
The president’s signature came after lawmakers hastily cleared the measure in both chambers earlier in the day. The Senate’s vote was 65 to 35; the House’s was 254 to 175.
“This is a good outcome — one I am happy we are getting done,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, speaking on the Senate floor ahead of the vote. “With so many things happening in Washington, the last thing the American people need is for the government to grind to a halt.”
Lawmakers reached a deal on the spending legislation after Democrats agreed to strip out a provision that would have raised the federal government’s ability to continue borrowing funds through the end of 2022. Senate Republicans blocked an initial funding package on Monday over its inclusion, refusing to give the majority party any of the votes needed to move ahead on a bill to avert a first-ever federal default in the coming weeks.
The legislation keeps the government fully funded through Dec. 3, giving lawmakers additional time to reach consensus over the dozen annual bills that dictate federal spending. It provides $6.3 billion to help Afghan refugees resettle in the United States and $28.6 billion to help communities rebuild from hurricanes, wildfires and other recent natural disasters.
“This bill is not a permanent solution,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee. “I look forward to soon beginning negotiations with my counterparts across the aisle and across the Capitol to complete full year government funding bills.”
“The American people are capable of building a future that is stronger and more prosperous as long as they have the tools they need to do it,” she added. “This bill helps ensure that they have those tools.”
The disaster funding is intended to help communities across the country continue recovering from the damage inflicted in recent years by natural disasters, including Hurricanes Ida, Delta, Zeta, and Laura, as well as wildfires, droughts and winter storms.
The aid for Afghan refugees including funds for emergency housing, English lessons and additional resources.
Before agreeing to the details of the spending bill on Thursday morning, the Senate defeated an amendment proposed by Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, that would have curtailed the duration of some of the benefits for Afghan refugees.
Senators also voted down an amendment, offered by Senator Roger Marshall, Republican of Kansas, that would have barred funds from going toward the implementation and enforcement of Mr. Biden’s coronavirus vaccine mandate, as well as an amendment that would deny lawmakers pay should they fail to pass a budget resolution and the dozen spending bills by Oct. 1.
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Manchin Voices Support for a Slimmer Social Safety Net Bill
Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia for the first time stated publicly how much funding he would support in a reconciliation bill focused on social programs, saying that he could not vote for a package costing more than $1.5 trillion.
“I’m willing to sit down and work through that $1.5 [trillion] to get our priorities and they can come back and do later, and they can run on the rest of it later. I think there’s many ways to get to where they want to, just on everything at one time. No, no, my top line has not been — my top line has been $1.5 because I believe in my heart that what we can do and what the needs we have right now, and what we can afford to do without basically changing our whole society to an entitlement mentality. We’ll do in good faith. I’m trying to be as honest and upfront —” Reporter: “You said you talked to Joe Biden — about the $1.5 trillion number.” “We talked about that.” “What did he say about that?” “And he once — he’s really sincere. He would like to have a lot more than that. And I said, ‘Mr. President, I understand that it’s just — you know, hopefully you can respect.’ He’s always been so respectful. He said, ‘Hey, Joe, I’ll never ask you to go against your convictions.’”
Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a centrist Democrat, said Thursday that he could not support a social safety net bill of more than $1.5 trillion, less than half the size of the package that President Biden and Democratic leaders have been trying to push through Congress.
In comments to reporters outside the Capitol, Mr. Manchin laid out publicly for the first time the general outlines of what he would be willing to support, putting detail to what he has said for weeks — that he could not vote for a package anywhere near the size of the sprawling $3.5 trillion plan Democrats sketched out in their budget blueprint.
Mr. Manchin’s relative silence on what specific proposals he would eventually support has frustrated liberals who have feared he would ultimately oppose an ambitious plan to expand health care, education, paid leave and anti-climate change programs, coupled with an array of tax increases on the wealthy and corporations.
“I’m willing to sit down and work through that 1.5 and get our priorities,” Mr. Manchin said, standing outside the Capitol as protesters heckled him nearby.Liberal Democrats who want a more expansive bill “can come back and do later, and they can run on the rest of it later. I think there’s many ways to get to where they want to — just not everything at one time.”
It was unclear whether going public with those details would help assuage or further anger liberal Democrats, who have threatened to oppose a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package on track for a House vote on Thursday without substantial progress toward passing the second, far larger bill.
Still, the comments were his most forthcoming about his willingness to support the social policy plan, which Democrats plan to push through using a fast-track process known as budget reconciliation that shields fiscal legislation from a filibuster. Democrats are trying to pass the package over united Republican opposition, meaning they cannot spare even one vote in the evenly divided Senate.
Mr. Manchin said that he had informed Mr. Biden in the last week about his overall spending number and acknowledged that “he would like to have a lot more than that.”
Mr. Manchin spoke out about his position after the news of an agreement enshrining it, signed by both him and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, leaked out on Thursday. The document, dated July 28, says that Mr. Manchin will not support any plan that lacks conditions for any new spending, income thresholds for social programs, accommodations for fossil fuel tax credits and natural gas, or does not devote any revenue exceeding $1.5 trillion to deficit reduction.
The agreement, obtained by Politico and confirmed by two people with knowledge of it, said that Mr. Manchin “does not guarantee that he will vote for the final reconciliation legislation if it exceeds the conditions outlined in this agreement.”
Mr. Manchin’s memo also stipulated a number of demands to help the fossil fuel industry. It said that, in his role as chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, he must have full control over crafting the central climate change provisions of the legislation — all but ensuring that those provisions will be far less ambitious and more fossil-fuel friendly than Mr. Biden had hoped.
In addition, the memo demands that if the legislation were to include extensions of tax credits for wind and solar power, it would not undo tax breaks for fossil fuel producers.
Mr. Schumer, who signed the agreement as he was working to persuade Mr. Manchin to support the budget blueprint, also appears to have scrawled “I will try to dissuade Joe on many of these” underneath his signature.
On Thursday, a spokesman emphasized that Mr. Schumer did not consider it binding.
“As the document notes, Leader Schumer never agreed to any of the conditions Senator Manchin laid out; he merely acknowledged where Senator Manchin was on the subject at the time,” said Justin Goodman, the spokesman.
On Thursday, the office of Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another moderate holdout on Mr. Biden’s plan, said she would not “negotiate through the press” but had made her priorities and concerns known to Mr. Biden and Mr. Schumer.
Coral Davenport contributed reporting.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday vowed to push ahead with a House vote on a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that passed the Senate with bipartisan support, driving Democrats toward a showdown between moderate supporters of the bill and liberals who have said they will bring it down without progress on a separate social policy measure.
Democratic leaders told lawmakers that no votes would occur before 9 p.m., but did not rule out the possibility of completing work on the bipartisan bill Thursday evening.
Democrats entered Thursday juggling four consequential tasks on the final day of the current fiscal year: keeping the government open past midnight, ensuring it can pay its debts, securing the infrastructure bill and drafting a climate change and social safety net bill that the speaker called the “culmination” of her congressional career.
They accomplished the first task, as both the House and Senate managed to pass a bill to keep funding flowing into early December, removing the immediate threat of a government shutdown.
The rest is a mess. Liberal House members emerged from a meeting with the speaker at midday to say they would oppose passage of the infrastructure bill until the Senate pass a $3.5 trillion social policy bill that expands child care and early childhood education, creates a paid family and medical leave program and begins to tackle climate change, to name only a few provisions.
“The speaker really just wanted to see where we were, and we explained that we’re in the same place,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington and the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
But Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, told reporters he has no intention of voting for any social policy and climate change bill that costs more than $1.5 trillion over 10 years. His advice for Democrats who want a larger package: “Elect more liberals.”
Ms. Pelosi, speaking at her weekly news conference, stayed relentlessly optimistic, speaking of the common ground she shares with Mr. Manchin, a fellow Italian American and Catholic.
“Let me tell you about negotiating: You cannot tire,” she said.
Both the infrastructure and social policy bills are major priorities for President Biden, who invested ample political capital in the infrastructure compromise and has staked his presidency on enactment of a transformational social policy package.
White House officials declined to discuss the details of meetings and discussions with Mr. Manchin and the other Democratic hold out on the $3.5 trillion package, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, which have intensified in recent days as some Democrats have grumbled that the president needed to play a bigger role in ensuring the success of his agenda.
Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House, rejected the criticism, saying Mr. Biden was doing precisely what he needed to.
“He knows how to make his case, he knows how to count votes, and he knows how to deliver for the American middle class,” Mr. Bates said.
But it was unclear, with Republican leaders in the House urging their members to oppose the bipartisan infrastructure bill, whether the legislation could overcome liberal defections on Thursday.
“That’s the path,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared, as she zipped between her office and the House chamber, surrounded by her security detail and a gaggle of reporters. “That’s the one we’re on. And it’s still on.”
Ms. Pelosi may be on a path, but with President Biden’s infrastructure bill still in limbo on Thursday evening, nobody in the Capitol seemed to know quite what that path was.
Ms. Pelosi had promised the House would vote Thursday on the bill. Instead, rank-and-file Democrats and members of the Democratic leadership team trooped in and out of the speaker’s suite on the second floor of the Capitol for much of the day, as Ms. Pelosi tried to round up the necessary votes to pass the measure.
Liberals were balking, insisting they would vote no unless the measure was paired with an expansive social policy bill. Moderates were frustrated; they need to show their constituents that they are doing something — anything — and are eager for the vote. The question of the day was: Would the bill come to the floor, as Ms. Pelosi had promised? Nobody seemed prepared to offer an unqualified “yes.”
“I don’t know,” Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 House Democrat, told reporters who asked if the vote would come Thursday night. Mr. Clyburn is the Democratic whip — the leader responsible for counting (or in congressional parlance, “whipping”) votes. But for this bill, at least, it appears the one cracking the whip is Ms. Pelosi.
The No. 2 Democrat, Representative Steny D. Hoyer of Maryland, did not have much to add. Are you confident, he was asked, that if the bill came to the floor it would pass? “I’m confident that a majority of members are for it,” he said, leaving open the possibility that being for it and voting for it are not the same thing.
As afternoon headed toward evening, reporters were taking bets. Would the vote come at midnight? 1 a.m.? Later? Was there an ample supply of caffeine in the press gallery? Some in the Democratic rank and file were growing frustrated.
“We’ve been told over and over that we’re voting on this today,” said Representative Elissa Slotkin, a centrist Democrat from Michigan. “All the caucuses that I’m part of have been telling me that we’re voting on this today. We’re just waiting, for standby, on when.”
At 5:45 p.m., she got her answer — sort of. The House went into recess, with no votes scheduled until at least 9 p.m.
In a pivotal week, in a make-or-break stretch for President Biden’s domestic agenda, congressional Democrats are trying to assemble a puzzle of four jagged pieces that may or may not fit together.
Making them work as a whole is critical for the party’s agenda and political prospects. Failure could have major electoral and economic consequences — including the potential of a first-ever default on the government’s debt that could precipitate a global financial crisis. Here are all the moving parts.
Piece 1: Government funding.
Lawmakers entered this week facing a critical deadline: At a second past midnight on Friday morning, the parts of the government that operate under the discretion of Congress’s annual spending process had been set to run out of money.
Oct. 1 is the beginning of the fiscal year, and with larger issues dominating their attention, the Democratic House and Senate have not completed any of the annual appropriations bills to fund the Departments of Defense, Transportation, Health and Human Services, State and Homeland Security, to name a few.
On Thursday afternoon, lawmakers averted a potential shutdown. The Senate passed a stopgap bill that would keep federal funding flowing into December and allow more time for the annual appropriations bills to be completed. The House quickly passed the bill as well, clearing the way for Mr. Biden to sign it and keep the government funded.
Piece 2: The debt limit.
Raising the debt limit is akin to paying off your credit card bill at the end of the month, because a higher borrowing ceiling allows the Treasury to pay creditors, contractors and agencies money that was already extracted from them in Treasury bonds and notes or contracts. It is not for future obligations.
Republicans have made it clear that they intend to filibuster an ordinary bill to raise the debt ceiling, as they did on Monday. For Democrats to do so unilaterally, they would most likely have to use a budget process called reconciliation that shields fiscal measures from a filibuster.
Doing so is a complex and time-consuming affair. It all has to be done in the next two to three weeks, to beat the rapidly approaching “X date” when the government defaults. Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, told Congress on Tuesday that the deadline is Oct. 18.
Piece 3: Infrastructure.
In August, with rare bipartisan swagger, the Senate passed a $1 trillion bill to build or fortify roads, bridges, tunnels, transit and rural broadband networks. The 69 “yes” votes included Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and 18 others from his party. Then it got more complicated.
Pressing for a quick vote on the bill, nine conservative-leaning Democrats in the House threatened to withhold their votes for the party’s $3.5 trillion budget blueprint until the Senate-passed infrastructure bill cleared their chamber. But now liberals in the House are threatening to withhold their votes for the infrastructure measure until the budget blueprint has successfully made its way through reconciliation.
Piece 4: Social policy reconciliation.
Democrats’ exceedingly ambitious social policy bill, which Mr. Biden calls his “Build Back Better” plan, is packed with longstanding party priorities. The House has drafted a 2,465-page version that includes a huge array of programs to combat climate change, the extension of a generous child tax credit, universal prekindergarten, greatly expanded access to community college, increased resources for elder care and paid leave, and a Medicare expansion to cover vision, hearing and dental care — all paid for by trillions of dollars in tax increases on corporations and the wealthy.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi had hoped to put it to a vote this week, but she faced two problems: As of now, Democrats most likely do not have the votes, and Senate Democratic leaders have yet to produce a detailed bill that can draw the support of every member of their caucus.
Several conservative-leaning Democrats in both chambers, including Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have said they cannot support the plan as proposed. And because Republicans have made it clear they are unified in their opposition, Democrats cannot afford to lose even one vote from their party in the Senate and can afford to lose as few as three votes in the House.
Mr. Biden has been negotiating with the holdouts to determine what they could support. But for now, the lack of agreement on the sprawling plan is blocking its progress — and leaving the fate of the infrastructure measure uncertain as well.
Amtrak would see its biggest infusion of money since its inception a half-century ago. Climate resilience programs would receive their largest burst of government spending ever. The nation’s power grid would be upgraded to the tune of $73 billion.
The sprawling, $1 trillion bill that the Senate passed last month — a bipartisan deal that is the product of months of negotiating and years of pent-up ambitions to repair the nation’s crumbling infrastructure — would amount to the most substantial government expenditure on the aging public works system since 2009. It includes $550 billion in new funds and the renewal of an array of programs otherwise scheduled to expire at the end of September.
It is also stuffed with pet projects and priorities that touch on nearly every facet of American life, including the most obscure, like a provision to allow blood transport vehicles to use highway car pool lanes to bypass traffic when fresh vials are on board and another to fully fund a federal grant program to promote “pollinator-friendly practices” near roads and highways. (Price tag for the latter: $2 million per year.)
The measure represents a crucial piece of President Biden’s economic agenda, and the agreement that gave rise to it was a major breakthrough in his quest for a bipartisan compromise. But it was also notable for the concessions Mr. Biden was forced to make to strike the deal.
For example, the legislation includes $73 billion to modernize the nation’s electricity grid, which energy analysts said would lay the groundwork for pivoting the nation off fossil fuels. But it contains only a fraction of the money Mr. Biden requested for major environmental initiatives and extends a lifeline to natural gas and nuclear energy, provisions that have angered House progressives.
Paring back the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion domestic policy package will involve difficult choices for a party fractured by mistrust and competing priorities. But in a package that is intended to shape every facet of American life, including public education, health care and the environment, there is room for agreement, even in a thinly divided Congress.
Here are three possible scenarios for how to structure a final deal.
A slightly scaled-back plan that uses budget tricks to hold down the cost.
Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, initially urged his colleagues to embrace spending as much as $6 trillion over 10 years as they began drafting the bill.
To narrow the scope to its current price tag of $3.5 trillion over 10 years, aides said, Mr. Sanders and his colleagues employed budget gimmicks like setting earlier end dates on programs or narrowing their proposed size to lower their cost.
A lowest-common-denominator $900 billion package that extends existing health and child care benefits.
The easiest fallback for Democrats might be to extend the generous tax credits and other benefits created for a single year in the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief law, known as the American Rescue Plan. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, that skinny option would total $900 billion, still more than President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus plan, which, when it passed, was considered huge.
A middle-ground $1.5 trillion bill that invests huge resources in programs to combat climate change.
Progressive Democrats have indicated that they will not vote for the $1 trillion infrastructure bill without ensuring passage of the social welfare and climate change bill. To pass the former without the latter could actually make global warming worse, they argue.
To answer those concerns, Democrats could include the social welfare components of the lowest-common-denominator option — extending the temporary benefits of the American Rescue Plan — while also going big on climate change.
The budget reconciliation process allows Congress to advance certain spending and tax bills on a simple majority vote, freeing lawmakers in the Senate from the 60-vote threshold most legislation must meet to be considered. Democrats are aiming to use the process to pass the sweeping $3.5 trillion social safety net and climate change measure, which carries much of President Biden’s agenda, in the face of united Republican opposition.
The process begins with a budget resolution, which establishes a blueprint for federal spending and directs congressional committees to write bills to achieve certain policy results, setting spending and revenues over a certain amount of time. Its name refers to the process of reconciling existing laws with those directives. Here are some key things to know about the legislative maneuver.
The process is subject to strict rules that limit what can be included.
While reconciliation allows senators to scale procedural and scheduling hurdles, it is also subject to strict limits that could constrain the scope of any pandemic relief package Democrats seek to pass.
In the Senate, the “Byrd Rule,” established by former Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, bars extraneous provisions, including any measure that does not change revenues or spending, affects the Social Security program or increases the deficit after a certain period of time set in the budget resolution. It is intended to ensure that the reconciliation process cannot be abused to jam through any unrelated provision.
The rule’s name lends itself to a number of bird-related puns commonly used to describe the stages of the reconciliation process. There is the “Byrd bath,” when the Senate parliamentarian scrubs and analyzes a bill for any provision that violates the rule if a senator raises a concern about a violation. Anything that does not survive the scrutiny is known as a “Byrd dropping,” and is removed from the legislation before it can advance.
Vice President Kamala Harris could also overrule the parliamentarian, but that has not been done since 1975.
The process is in motion, but the legislative math is proving tough for Democrats.
A budget blueprint on the social spending and climate bill was advanced in August and committees have been working on drafting the reconciliation legislation, but key centrist Democrats in the Senate who have balked at the $3.5 trillion price tag have brought the process to an impasse as party leaders try to negotiate a compromise.
Because Republicans have made it clear they are unified in their opposition, Democrats cannot afford to lose even one vote from their party in the Senate. In the House, the math is almost as challenging; if every member voted, Democrats could afford to lose only three of their members and still pass the legislation.
The Senate on Thursday rejected a Republican effort to use a spending bill needed to keep the government open past midnight to curtail assistance to Afghans who were quickly evacuated to the United States as American troops withdrew from their country last month.
The proposal by Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas was just one of a series of skirmishes over a bill that would extend federal funding into early December and provide emergency funding for the resettlement of Afghan refugees and disaster recovery. The legislation is expected to pass later Thursday with bipartisan support, but first, Republicans have demanded votes on several proposed changes.
Mr. Cotton’s proposal failed on a 50-to-50 vote, along party lines. Under Senate rules, a tied vote on a proposed change to a bill is not enough to amend the legislation.
The amendment would have cut off aid for things such as housing, food and medical benefits after March 31, 2023, for Afghans who were granted parole to quickly enter the United States because of the urgent humanitarian crisis.
Mr. Cotton has argued that terminating the benefits is reasonable, considering that Afghans who received special visas for helping the American military may only receive such benefits for eight months.
The amendment also would have cut from the bill language that would have waived certain requirements for obtaining driver’s licenses or identification cards, making it easier for the Afghans to get them. Those who were granted humanitarian parole lack some of the documentation required under the REAL ID Act, which was created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to enhance security on commercial airlines.
His amendment also attempted to force the Department of Homeland Security to work more quickly to process Afghan asylum applications, moving up the deadline to conduct a first interview with an applicant to 15 days instead of 45 days, and required the department to make a decision within 150 days of the application’s filing.
Before the vote, Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said the amendment would ensure Afghan evacuees are “properly vetted.” But Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, argued the amendment was unnecessary, saying the evacuees were already being properly vetted and it merely blocked badly needed benefits for those in dire need of help.
Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, touted the bill’s provisions to help Afghan evacuees in a speech on the Senate floor before the vote. He urged his colleagues to “strongly oppose” Mr. Cotton’s proposal and other amendments offered by the Republicans, warning that accepting any could slow down the process and result in a government shutdown.
“It provides critical assistance to Afghan refugees who fled the Taliban in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan,” he said of the funding bill. “Many of those refugees worked with American forces and helped us.”
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Biden and Pelosi Attend Congressional Baseball Game
President Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi were seen cheering on the sideline and talking to players at the annual Congressional Baseball Game as they tried to salvage two crucial pieces of Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda.
[crowd cheering] [crowd cheering]
Lawmakers have been playing a lot of political hardball on Capitol Hill given the multiple crises consuming Washington, but it was actual hardball that drew Democrats and Republicans to Nationals Park on Wednesday night for the annual congressional baseball charity game.
The game provided a brief moment of camaraderie amid deep partisan division and high drama in Congress, as leaders rushed to try to head off a government shutdown and a potential federal default while Democrats toiled to bridge bitter rifts among them over a huge piece of social policy.
It also offered yet another venue for the Democrats to try to corral votes for a $1 trillion infrastructure bill slated for a House vote later Thursday, which currently appears far short of the support needed to pass given liberal defections.
President Biden — a former participant in his Senate days — made an extended appearance, even mingling in the Republican dugout with his political foes. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was also on hand to do what she usually does — exhort her fellow Democrats to deliver a win. They did not in this case, falling to the Republican lineup 13-12 in a close game that Ms. Pelosi must hope is not a harbinger for the tough votes she is facing.
The president drew a few boos from the Republican side of the stands, but was welcomed in the party’s dugout for photos and ribbing even though the red-uniformed G.O.P. lawmakers oppose almost everything on his legislative agenda. He handed out ice cream bars whose wrappers bore the presidential seal and took calls as he watched the game.
Ms. Pelosi could be seen on a telecast of the game feverishly working her own phone from the stands, with a crucial intramural Democratic showdown looming on the infrastructure measure, which progressives have threatened to sink until they get a vote on a $3.5 trillion social policy package that carries most of their priorities.
The play of the night, however, was an actual out-of-the-park home run by Republican Representative Greg Steube of Florida, an impressive feat in a game played by a bunch of amateurs well past their playing primes in most cases.
The big question after the game was how Ms. Pelosi and her party would fare when their moment at the legislative plate arrived."
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