Nancy Pelosi Hands Keys To The House To Progressives
How Speaker Pelosi Lost Control Of Infrastructure Legislation
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill passed the Senate 69-30 on August 10th with 19 Republicans voting yes along with 50 Democrats. At the time it was conceivable that the Bill could pass the House, where there are four times as many Republicans as in the Senate, with around 80 GOP votes. That was then, this is now. Sensing a divided Democratic House, and an opportunity to hand Biden an embarrassing defeat it is now unclear if even 10 House Republicans could be found to support the Bill.
How did we get here? Fearing that the Senate would be content to pass the Infrastructure Bill without passing other items on their wish list through reconciliation, House Progressives wanted both bills to pass at the same time. Giving in to pressure to link the bills, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi agreed that they must pass in tandem. In doing so, Pelosi essentially ceded control of the process to the Progressive wing of the party.
Having delayed the vote for almost three months now, Pelosi can no longer count on the support of any Republicans to pass Infrastructure. She now needs almost every Democrat to vote yes in order for the Bill to pass. This has given Progressives complete leverage over the legislation. Which they have used, forgive me, liberally.
The Speaker has three times now promised a vote on the standalone Infrastructure Bill and three times Progressives have threatened to withhold their support forcing Pelosi to delay the vote. A few months ago Pelosi could have enforced party unity by daring Progressives to vote no on the Infrastructure Bill with the likes of Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greened and Jim Jordan. At that time, Pelosi could have counted on the votes of dozens of Republicans to pass the legislation regardless. No more however.
At this point, Pelosi essentially needs the permission of the House Progressive Caucus to pass either of the Bills. That is s a tremendous amount of power to give to a group which seems to believe that legislative success is measured by how many free benefits they can give people. Do married couples making up to $400,000 a year really need to be gifted an additional $2000 per year in tax payer money for every child they have? Progressives seem to think so. Even in a nation already over $27 Trillion in debt.
Republicans have long enjoyed having Speaker Pelosi as her party’s leader in the House. This has allowed them to portray Democrats as captive to liberal San Francisco values and out of touch with mainstream America. It should be both instructive and a warning to Democrats that for this generation of Progressives, Pelosi is seen as not nearly liberal enough.
In 2020, while Democrats took back the White House and regained control of the Senate, the party surprisingly lost seats in the House. Some believe that this was the result of House Democrats drifting too far left under Pelosi. Having an opportunity to check this perception, the Speaker instead essentially handed Progressives the gavel on the Infrastructure and Reconciliation Bills. She has ended up emboldening Progressives while looking quite weak in the process.