The House Speaker said yesterday late afternoon there would be a vote no sooner than 9 p.m. last night. However after canvassing her caucus, she didn’t have the votes and postponed it.

Nancy is in this pickle because of conflicting promises she made to her progressive and moderate wings. In June or July after Sen’s. Manchin and Synema wrote and passed in the Senate the $1T infrastructure bill she said that the two bills were henceforth joined and that the House “ain’t” going to vote on the infrastructure bill until agreement was reached on the $3.5T social net reconciliation bill. That was a promise made to progressives, who publicly reiterated many times that they would not vote on the one without simultaneous passage of both.

Then later, Nancy put in writing her guarantee to her moderate members that she would bring the infrastructure bill to vote on or before Sept. 27. Missing was any conjunction with the social net bill. The Progressive Caucus was incensed and reiterated their stance, both or neither. Sept. 27 came and went. Then it was Sept. 30, yesterday. Now, it's Sept. 31. Thus with her announcements last night and this morning Nancy has broken both promises to both wings and both are pissed.

Yesterday it was revealed that Manchin, who, to reiterate, co-wrote the infrastructure bill, weirdly co-signed a document with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, putting his $1.5T limit on the reconciliation bill. Manchin’s itemization gutted climate provisions related to fossil fuels. The document is not binding. Schumer, in fact, wrote under their signatures, “I hope to change Joe’s mind on most of these,” but there it was: the Manchin social bill with price tag and specs.

There was no need for this. I would have thought Nancy Pelosi, experienced and supremely skilled, would have known better than to conjoin two massive, complex bills, to set arbitrary deadlines for passage of both, and to set the deadlines in concrete with conflicting guarantees. 

I cannot imagine that the meaning of the headline and sub-ledes above is that the Progressive Caucus is going to let King Coal Manchin write both bills, cutting by more than half their dream social net bill, but that seems to be the implication. I would vote No on Manchin's infrastructure bill and kill both. I hope and am extremely confident that the Progressive Caucus will vote No. 

The peril to President Biden's legislative goals need not be, the deadlines are arbitrary. But if peril there is it is not peril of the progressives' doing and not their responsibility to pull the president from self-immolation. Manchin's social net bill is simply unacceptable. If killing the infrastructure bill is the price of killing that lame-ass social net bill well, that price tag was affixed by the moderates.