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PRESENTED BY

BY JOHN BRESNAHAN, ANNA PALMER AND JAKE SHERMAN

THE TOP

Friday mornings are as good a time as any to pause and reflect. So stop for a second and recognize what’s happened in the 75 days since the 117th Congress began.

→ Speaker Nancy Pelosi secured another term as speaker of the House, likely her final one. 

→ Supporters of former President Donald Trump attacked and invaded the Capitol during Congress’s counting of Electoral College votes. 

→ The House then impeached Trump. The Senate acquitted him.

→ Congress passed a huge $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill, one of the most expensive pieces of legislation in U.S. history. 

That’s all in less than one quarter of 2021.

So we’re going to look back a bit, analyze what happened, what didn’t and what it will lead to next.

The Biden administration felt strongly that they needed to come out of the gate quickly with the American Rescue Plan. They knew it was big, and they knew it was expensive. And, frankly, they knew it probably wouldn’t get GOP support. But the White House was absolutely committed to nearly every policy proposal included in the bill — many of which were in the House-passed Heroes Act last year. They got it through the Congress the only way possible: With arm twisting and only Democratic votes, thanks to reconciliation. 

Where Biden stands with Republicans: The Covid funding fight left Republicans feeling snubbed. We’ve been pretty consistent all along here that there was no deal between the Biden administration and the GOP on what became the ARP. But the senators that knew Biden during his Senate tenure came away thinking that White House staff was holding him back from a bipartisan deal. And Biden does deserve some blame for his rigidity in crafting the ARP. Privately, the administration and congressional Democrats admit that they were simply of a different mindset than Republicans. The most ambitious Republicans wanted $1.3 trillion at most, and Dems wanted nearly $2 trillion. Democrats saw no deal for them there.

Where Biden stands with Democrats: The ARP was a massive victory for progressives on nearly every front. We don’t need to take all your time listing the wins for the left in the bill; the dramatic expansion of child tax credit alone was a major policy shift.

There are still some Democrats who argue, quite surprisingly, that the White House could’ve done more for progressives here. The left on Capitol Hill says the administration should’ve allowed VP Kamala Harris to overturn the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling blocking a minimum wage boost in the bill. They want Biden to fully endorse blowing up the legislative filibuster. Never mind that neither proposal has a majority in the Senate.

Where Biden is going to go: The White House is now moving into a different phase: Standard-issue legislating. It plans to devote the next four to five months to infrastructure and various proposals including in the Build Back Better plan. Top Democrats expect Congress will pass a number of infrastructure and public works bills through the summer and potentially into the fall.

Here is how it will work. At some point, the White House will lay out the big package it wants passed: A large scale infrastructure bill with a tax hike — probably corporate, but they’ll pitch individual-rate increases too — to pay for it. This will take a lot of time and energy to cobble together. 

But in the interim — meaning throughout the spring and summer — the White House plans to work with Congress to try to pass smaller pieces of legislation. It doesn’t know how many, but here is a flavor of the kinds of bills they hope to move: A research and development bill, as well as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Endless Frontiers Act, which modernizes the National Science Foundation. Small-bore, bipartisan bills that could be positioned as progress. The House will be able to clear these pieces of legislation, since Democrats have a majority. Some of these bills may get 60 votes in the Senate, some may fail. 

The idea is to create a political drumbeat for infrastructure and public-works related legislation bookended by the announcement of the large-scale bill at the front end and its passage on the back end — with a bunch of incremental bills in between. A final vote on a large-scale bill would be aimed for the end of the summer or early fall.

Legislative plans don’t always work as envisioned. So this could all change or fall apart. 

But this makes sense from a planning perspective. There’ll be a legislative pile up at the end of September no matter what happens. The highway bill expires, so something needs to get done on infrastructure. A debt ceiling increase comes due and government funding expires on Sept. 30. We expect a late September legislative cliff. A big one. A cliff will test this White House in a huge way. 

The pitfalls: The downsides are aplenty here as we move into the second quarter. 

→ Progressives: Let’s just be perfectly clear here: We can’t envision a scenario in which the left doesn’t get let down in some way, shape or form. The left so desperately wants all Democratic D.C. to push through the Green New Deal, a $15-minimum wage and more. These policies just simply can’t pass with the tight margins in the House and Senate. It’s not that elements within the administration don’t want them to pass — they do — but again, you have to work with the Congress you have, not the one you want. The Senate isn’t blowing up the filibuster, and there aren’t 60 votes to hike the minimum wage or pass climate forward legislation as is.

→ Republicans: Biden’s got problems with Republicans — there’s no doubt about that. They think that Biden is being controlled by senior White House staff at best, or at worst, far more progressive than he was as a senator. We’ll have to see if there is anything the two sides can do together in the next few months. There are Republicans willing to work with Biden — Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to name a few. And if a proposal gets legs, maybe more Republicans jump on board.

FLARE UP IN ALASKA

Blinken clashes with Chinese officials in Anchorage

The Washington-Beijing relationship in the Biden era is off to a rocky start. You can check out the video of the back and forth above — it’s pretty heated. Yang Jiechi, the top Chinese diplomat who is the former Chinese ambassador to the U.S., tore into the United States. Antony Blinken, the secretary of State, retaliated. They did it all in front of the cameras — purposely. 

The interesting thing here in watching the video above is that Yang is a fluent English speaker, so he understood every single word that Blinken said — and all its nuances. 

Here’s how Lara Jakes, the NYT’s State Department reporter, put it this morning: “Even before the Biden administration’s first face-to-face meeting with senior Chinese diplomats on Thursday, American officials predicted the discussions would not go well. They were right: The traditional few minutes of opening greetings and remarks dissolved into more than an hour of very public verbal jousting, confirming the expected confrontational tone between the geopolitical rivals.”

WaPo’s John Hudson said: “The world’s two remaining superpowers presaged the meetings with elaborate public posturing, unveiling dueling agendas that appeared to offer little space for common ground amid disagreements over trade, Tibet, Hong Kong, the western Xinjiang region and the coronavirus pandemic.”

WSJ’s William Mauldin and Chun Han Wong in Anchorage: “The two-day meeting was billed in advance by U.S. officials as a chance to air divisive issues as the two sides look to delimit their rivalry and mark out areas for cooperation. The topics cover an array of friction points—from technology to China’s military muscle-flexing—that in the last year of the Trump administration sent relations between the two powers to their lowest point in decades. A senior U.S. official afterward accused [Yang Jiechi] of grandstanding.”

KEEPING TRACK

Dems get bipartisan immigration vote in the House

We are very, very skeptical that a broad-based immigration overhaul will happen this Congress. The margins are far too tight and there is no consensus at all on what needs to be done. Even if there was consensus, many would argue that neither party has the courage to do it.

But yesterday, the House passed two immigration-related bills with large bipartisan majorities. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act got 30 Republican yes votes and the Dream Act got nine GOP supporters.

What should you make of this? A majority of the House supports these two proposals. A majority of the Senate probably does too. But that’s not the name of the game in the Senate. The name of the game is 60. 

AP: “House OKs Dems’ immigration bills for Dreamers, farm workers,” by Alan Fram

MOMENTS

10 a.m.: President Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing. 

10:45 a.m.: Biden will leave the White House for Andrews and fly to Atlanta. … Speaker Nancy Pelosi will hold her weekly news conference.

12:45 p.m.: Biden will arrive in Atlanta at Dobbins Air Reserve Base, and he’ll fly to DeKalb-Peachtree Airport.

2:15 p.m.: Biden and VP Kamala Harris will visit the CDC.

3:35 p.m.: Biden and Harris will meet with Asian American leaders at Emory University.

4:40 p.m.: Biden will give remarks. 

7:10 p.m.: Biden will leave Atlanta for D.C. He’ll head to Camp David, where he will arrive at 9:45 p.m.

CLIP FILE

NYT: “Asian-American Lawmakers Call Out Racist Language: ‘I Am Not a Virus’” by Catie Edmondson

“North Korea Cuts Diplomatic Ties with Malaysia Over U.S. Extradition,” by Choe Sang-Hun in Seoul: “North Korea on Friday severed diplomatic ties with Malaysia after that country’s highest court agreed to extradite a North Korean man accused of money laundering to the United States, a major coup in Washington’s efforts to choke Pyongyang’s illicit trade.”

“A New Kind of Political Spouse Arrives in Washington,” by Katie Rogers

“U.S. Rushes to Expand Covid Vaccine Eligibility in a ‘Race Against Time,’” by Julie Bosman and Mitch Smith in Chicago

WaPo: “A nationwide horror: Witnesses, police paint a picture of a murderous rampage that took 8 lives,” Tim Craig, Mark Berman, Hannah Knowles and Marc Fisher in Atlanta

“Georgia shootings could test state’s new hate-crimes law as debate rages over suspect’s motive,” by Griff Witte, David Nakamura, Marianna Sotomayor and Timothy Bella

WSJ Editorial Board: “Earmarks Are the GOP’s Bridge to Nowhere”: “The scheme corrodes public trust. Some congressional districts are huge, including at-large seats for the entire states of Alaska and Montana. Do elected politicians who cover thousands of square miles—and who throw a fit anytime military bases or post offices are closed—objectively choose the best projects amid the clamor for earmarks? Forgive voters for suspecting that squeaky friends and political allies get the grease.

“All of this is the reason Democrats want to restore earmarks, which is one more argument for Republicans to refuse. There’s an election in 20 months. Behaving like the me-too spending party won’t make it easier to run against the Washington status quo. Mr. McCarthy should be trying to regain a majority, and passing earmarks is a GOP bridge to nowhere.”

AP: “Biden, Harris offering solace to grieving Asian Americans,” by Bill Barrow, Jonathan, Lemire and Jeff Amy

Politico: “The Cuomo Show goes dark,” by Bill Mahoney and Anna Gronewold

Politico Magazine: “Ron DeSantis Is Very Pleased With Himself,” by Michael Kruse in Sumterville, Fla. 

SNEAK PEAK

Schumer sets up votes on Biden noms

The Senate will be busy with votes next week, including a cloture vote on a high-profile nominee for OMB. And President Joe Biden’s Cabinet will finally be in place when the Senate is expected to confirm Marty Walsh on Monday as Labor secretary.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has filed cloture on the nominations of Shalanda Young to be deputy director at OMB; Vivek Murthy for Surgeon General; Rachel Levine to assistant secretary of the Health and Human Services Department; David Turk to be deputy secretary at the Energy Department; and Adewale Adeyemo to be deputy secretary of the Treasury Department.

Young’s nomination is being watched closely by House Democratic leaders, especially in the wake of Neera Tanden’s withdrawal from consideration for OMB director. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) have all publicly backed Young to serve as OMB director, an extraordinarily open move to pressure Biden to select the highly respected House staffer. White House Chief Of Staff Ron Klain told us that Young is under consideration for the post.

The other four nominees also have bipartisan support, and several are history making selections. Adeyemo, for instance, would be the first Black person to hold the number two post at Treasury. Levine would be the first openly transgender official to confirmed by the Senate. If Young is eventually tapped for the top post at OMB, she would be the first Black woman to lead that powerful agency.

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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images