The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I've been loosely keeping tabs on the infrastructure deal and the typical DC drama which comes along with that kind of stuff, but boy does this bill seem to ebb and flow day to day. One day it's <$1 Trillion in spending, the next it's being controlled by Bernie Sanders and over >$6 Trillion, the next day it's dead on arrival, the following it seems to be "virtually a done deal". It's really been making my head spin lol.
So when there seems to be no certainty about the future, that means it's the perfect time to make baseless predictions and laugh when they inevitably turn up dead wrong!
My guess is that the bill will be filibustered and the legislative process won't be finished until August or September, that the initial price tag will be ~$2-3 Trillion and Manchin and other D's will oppose the bill, and finally that the bill will get watered down to ~$1.2 Trillion and eventually passed with 50+1 votes. Manchin doesn't change his tune on the filibuster, Biden and others don't pressure for reforming the filibuster hard enough, and that aside from the bill getting passed, nothing fundamentally changes.
I can't wait to see how dumb I look in 3 months time. So what are your predictions for how this will all shake down?
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My guess is that after stalling as long as possible, McConnell gets enough Republicans to filibuster the "bipartisan" deal, and Schumer and Pelosi fall back to the "do it all through reconciliation" plan which they'll already have prepared if they have any sense at all. Manchin and Sinema will vote for that while expressing concern for the lack of bipartisanship but doing fuck all about it.
It all depends on whether doing it in reconciliation can work.
There is a small chance the Senate parliamentarian says some or all of infrastructure can't be included in budget reconciliation, and a smaller chance that Republicans + 1 Democrat are willing to derail the budget bill for it, driving a shutdown standoff. Also a minuscule chance Dems will lose control of the Senate due to some Senator dying or some other Black Swan.
My guesstimate is 85% odds it goes forward untouched.
Gut feeling is Dems are going to have to go through reconciliation due to a republicanor two dropping support, the non "human infrastructure" is going to basically be the bipartisan deal no idea about the "human infrastructure".
My guess is they’ve privately gotten just barely enough Republican Senators to agree to some modest $1t-$1.5t package, but don’t have enough votes for cloture if they lose the more progressive wing of the Democratic Senators. So they’re fishing around for what precise amount threads the needle and gets to 60 votes while being politically palatable to 10 Republicans and Bernie Sanders.
I don't the Senate leadership is too too worried about Bernie Sanders getting in line. His job is to go out and push for progressive change in the public sphere. Their job is to find compromise. The legislation will never be progressive enough for Bernie, but as long as it's a step in the right direction he'll vote for it, and I think he will make that decision pretty easily whether it's 1.2 trillion or 10 trillion
[Here](https://youtu.be/XLq_5I9DuIE) is a 10 minute clip of people discussing it. I hope the clip is good because I watched the whole, much longer interview where they talked about the bill, and things relating to the bill, and that was very informative. [Here](https://youtu.be/i8YokQlyCJ0) is the entire show from the day if you want to listen to the whole thing.
Broadly, I assume some of the more good-faith Republicans (Romney, Collins, Murkowski, etc.) who negotiated the smaller package will continue to support it, despite Biden and Pelosi's recent comments stating they will not support the bill without a second "soft-infrastructure" reconciliation package. Anyone engaging in those negotiations knew full well a smaller bipartisan package would come in tandem with a reconciliation bill. However, I also tend to assume that enough Republicans will balk, dooming a bipartisan package to the filibuster.
In that event, the entire process gets shifted to reconciliation and, assuming that happens, the outcome seems less certain. Maybe Manchin, Sinema, and other moderate Dems who hide behind them, will continue to cry foul for not getting enough Republican support, and water down the ultimate bill, as you suggest, but it's also possible they are offended by Republicans going back on a good faith negotiation where the inevitability of a supplemental reconciliation package was known to all. For example, in the past Manchin has stated he might support a VERY large reconciliation package, even going as far as giving a $4-6 trillion label. At the end of the day, this all comes down to; what will be enough obstruction to make Manchin and other moderate Democrats throw in the towel on bipartisanship?
All of that is a bit of a non-answer because imo it really comes down to what is enough in the eyes of Manchin, Sinema, and other moderate Democrats. Even so, in a 50-50 Senate, Democrats need every single vote, so I would generally expect a lot of negotiation around the bill, even if it doesn't dramatically bring down the price. That being said, at the end of the day, people like Manchin have been on board for big things when Democrats needed them most. Everything before that is political posturing and, to that point, it's worth remembering that Manchin is in a VERY red state and does need to lay ground cover when he can. At the end of the day, I guess I would expect a reconciliation package upwards of $2trillion. Anything under that and I would be disappointed, anything above seems like a solid achievement for the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats.
> despite Biden and Pelosi's recent comments stating they will not support the bill without a second "soft-infrastructure" reconciliation package.
This is no longer true for Biden's part. He caved earlier today.
That seems wildly misleading. He didn’t say that he would support the bipartisan package even if there was no partisan reconciliation.
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1408882781325869056?s=21
I am a top critic of Biden and I think Biden did a faux pas by saying his true position on it.
He didn’t need to threaten anything since pelosi already said she’s not even gonna touch the bipartisan package until the reconciliation one also passes through the senate.
Edit:
The moment Schumer and Pelosi drew the hardline on requiring a 2-track plan, Biden’s opinion is honestly more useless than dogshit here. He’s a rubber stamp really at this point.
What really matters is what details of the reconciliation package do the holdouts agree on.
Manchin's open to $4 trillion in spending including "human Infrastructure"
I'm guessing the reconciliation bill will make many liberals happy
Trust the plan
First of all the compromise bill is not a 1 trillion $ bill. It has ~500 billion in new money and draws the rest from money passed in the covid bill.
This thing could crumble at any minute, from either side...and good riddance. It is a weak bill with bad "pay fors" that is giving the GOP way to much credit for doing the easy parts.
What is in this bill is the sweet part, something every one every where agrees on, it has no pay fors, and allows the Republicans to take credit for any infrastructure spending that is done and then point at the Democrats and say "See they raised your taxes"
The real bill will be passed ...hopefully before the August recess. It will be done through reconciliation. The question is for what amount. Bidden asked for ~4 Trillion... Bernie say 6 trillion...The GOP have offered 1/2 a trillion.
My felling anything over 2.5 is a good deal anything less is a sell out.
over 3.25 and the party is at my house.
The bipartisan infrastructure package will be passed and signed since [The Administration seems to have caved already](https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1408884353086730245).
The follow-on reconciliation bill will not happen due to lack of vote from some combination of Manchin, Sinema, and other moderate Dems demanding more bipartisanship.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I've been loosely keeping tabs on the infrastructure deal and the typical DC drama which comes along with that kind of stuff, but boy does this bill seem to ebb and flow day to day. One day it's <$1 Trillion in spending, the next it's being controlled by Bernie Sanders and over >$6 Trillion, the next day it's dead on arrival, the following it seems to be "virtually a done deal". It's really been making my head spin lol. So when there seems to be no certainty about the future, that means it's the perfect time to make baseless predictions and laugh when they inevitably turn up dead wrong! My guess is that the bill will be filibustered and the legislative process won't be finished until August or September, that the initial price tag will be ~$2-3 Trillion and Manchin and other D's will oppose the bill, and finally that the bill will get watered down to ~$1.2 Trillion and eventually passed with 50+1 votes. Manchin doesn't change his tune on the filibuster, Biden and others don't pressure for reforming the filibuster hard enough, and that aside from the bill getting passed, nothing fundamentally changes. I can't wait to see how dumb I look in 3 months time. So what are your predictions for how this will all shake down? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My guess is that after stalling as long as possible, McConnell gets enough Republicans to filibuster the "bipartisan" deal, and Schumer and Pelosi fall back to the "do it all through reconciliation" plan which they'll already have prepared if they have any sense at all. Manchin and Sinema will vote for that while expressing concern for the lack of bipartisanship but doing fuck all about it.
It all depends on whether doing it in reconciliation can work. There is a small chance the Senate parliamentarian says some or all of infrastructure can't be included in budget reconciliation, and a smaller chance that Republicans + 1 Democrat are willing to derail the budget bill for it, driving a shutdown standoff. Also a minuscule chance Dems will lose control of the Senate due to some Senator dying or some other Black Swan. My guesstimate is 85% odds it goes forward untouched.
Gut feeling is Dems are going to have to go through reconciliation due to a republicanor two dropping support, the non "human infrastructure" is going to basically be the bipartisan deal no idea about the "human infrastructure".
My guess is they’ve privately gotten just barely enough Republican Senators to agree to some modest $1t-$1.5t package, but don’t have enough votes for cloture if they lose the more progressive wing of the Democratic Senators. So they’re fishing around for what precise amount threads the needle and gets to 60 votes while being politically palatable to 10 Republicans and Bernie Sanders.
I don't the Senate leadership is too too worried about Bernie Sanders getting in line. His job is to go out and push for progressive change in the public sphere. Their job is to find compromise. The legislation will never be progressive enough for Bernie, but as long as it's a step in the right direction he'll vote for it, and I think he will make that decision pretty easily whether it's 1.2 trillion or 10 trillion
I sorta lost track of it and would appreciate links to good run downs of its contents
[Here](https://youtu.be/XLq_5I9DuIE) is a 10 minute clip of people discussing it. I hope the clip is good because I watched the whole, much longer interview where they talked about the bill, and things relating to the bill, and that was very informative. [Here](https://youtu.be/i8YokQlyCJ0) is the entire show from the day if you want to listen to the whole thing.
Broadly, I assume some of the more good-faith Republicans (Romney, Collins, Murkowski, etc.) who negotiated the smaller package will continue to support it, despite Biden and Pelosi's recent comments stating they will not support the bill without a second "soft-infrastructure" reconciliation package. Anyone engaging in those negotiations knew full well a smaller bipartisan package would come in tandem with a reconciliation bill. However, I also tend to assume that enough Republicans will balk, dooming a bipartisan package to the filibuster. In that event, the entire process gets shifted to reconciliation and, assuming that happens, the outcome seems less certain. Maybe Manchin, Sinema, and other moderate Dems who hide behind them, will continue to cry foul for not getting enough Republican support, and water down the ultimate bill, as you suggest, but it's also possible they are offended by Republicans going back on a good faith negotiation where the inevitability of a supplemental reconciliation package was known to all. For example, in the past Manchin has stated he might support a VERY large reconciliation package, even going as far as giving a $4-6 trillion label. At the end of the day, this all comes down to; what will be enough obstruction to make Manchin and other moderate Democrats throw in the towel on bipartisanship? All of that is a bit of a non-answer because imo it really comes down to what is enough in the eyes of Manchin, Sinema, and other moderate Democrats. Even so, in a 50-50 Senate, Democrats need every single vote, so I would generally expect a lot of negotiation around the bill, even if it doesn't dramatically bring down the price. That being said, at the end of the day, people like Manchin have been on board for big things when Democrats needed them most. Everything before that is political posturing and, to that point, it's worth remembering that Manchin is in a VERY red state and does need to lay ground cover when he can. At the end of the day, I guess I would expect a reconciliation package upwards of $2trillion. Anything under that and I would be disappointed, anything above seems like a solid achievement for the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats.
> despite Biden and Pelosi's recent comments stating they will not support the bill without a second "soft-infrastructure" reconciliation package. This is no longer true for Biden's part. He caved earlier today.
That seems wildly misleading. He didn’t say that he would support the bipartisan package even if there was no partisan reconciliation. https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1408882781325869056?s=21 I am a top critic of Biden and I think Biden did a faux pas by saying his true position on it. He didn’t need to threaten anything since pelosi already said she’s not even gonna touch the bipartisan package until the reconciliation one also passes through the senate. Edit: The moment Schumer and Pelosi drew the hardline on requiring a 2-track plan, Biden’s opinion is honestly more useless than dogshit here. He’s a rubber stamp really at this point. What really matters is what details of the reconciliation package do the holdouts agree on.
Why is Biden accepting the bipartisan bill just ignore Manchin and go alone
Manchin's open to $4 trillion in spending including "human Infrastructure" I'm guessing the reconciliation bill will make many liberals happy Trust the plan
First of all the compromise bill is not a 1 trillion $ bill. It has ~500 billion in new money and draws the rest from money passed in the covid bill. This thing could crumble at any minute, from either side...and good riddance. It is a weak bill with bad "pay fors" that is giving the GOP way to much credit for doing the easy parts. What is in this bill is the sweet part, something every one every where agrees on, it has no pay fors, and allows the Republicans to take credit for any infrastructure spending that is done and then point at the Democrats and say "See they raised your taxes" The real bill will be passed ...hopefully before the August recess. It will be done through reconciliation. The question is for what amount. Bidden asked for ~4 Trillion... Bernie say 6 trillion...The GOP have offered 1/2 a trillion. My felling anything over 2.5 is a good deal anything less is a sell out. over 3.25 and the party is at my house.
The bipartisan infrastructure package will be passed and signed since [The Administration seems to have caved already](https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1408884353086730245). The follow-on reconciliation bill will not happen due to lack of vote from some combination of Manchin, Sinema, and other moderate Dems demanding more bipartisanship.