From the Washington Post:
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she wasn’t bluffing when warning that progressives were willing to tank the infrastructure plan until the House and the Senate also pass a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill that’s still far from finished. And it seems she meant business.
Jayapal told us in a Sunday night interview, before Pelosi’s announcement, that the number of Democrats willing to kill the infrastructure bill is growing.
“It’s actually increasing, and it’s increasing from members who aren’t just within the Progressive Caucus,” she said.
The CPC chair estimated last week that more than half of the 95 House Democrats in the caucus were prepared to vote “no.” “I think it’s now probably somewhere around 60,” she said.
“They’re members of the [Congressional] Black Caucus, the [Congressional] Hispanic Caucus, the [Congressional] Asian [Pacific American] Caucus, some of whom are not members of the Progressive Caucus, who feel very strongly that this is really the only shot we have to deliver on the agenda that the president ran on,” she said….
Jayapal sees three ways to shrink the bill’s price tag if it comes to that: Reduce the number of years the bill pays for some of the programs it creates; reduce the number of people who can take advantage of those programs or reduce the number of programs included in the bill.
“We much prefer the first option,” she said.
But Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii), one of the moderate-leaning members who pushed for a vote on the infrastructure bill today, said he had “great concern” about paring back the cost of the bill by tinkering with how many years it covers.
“There’s tremendous pressure and tremendous temptation to come up with voodoo budgeting to argue that the cost is less that it actually will be,” he said in an interview Sunday.
Case said he’d prefer to means-test “some of the critical programs that I agree are needed” so that Americans with higher incomes can’t take advantage of them. Jayapal has argued fervently against such an approach, citing pandemic rental assistance that didn’t reach those who needed it because of a complicated application process.