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PRESENTED BYBY JOHN BRESNAHAN, ANNA PALMER AND JAKE SHERMAN THE TOPGood morning. It’s Friday the 13th. News: This letter is going to get the House Democratic leadership’s attention. Nine House Democrats have signed a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying, “We will not consider voting for a budget resolution until the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passes the House and is signed into law.” The letter is signed by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.), Carolyn Bourdeaux (Ga.), Filemon Vela (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Vincente Gonzalez (Texas), Ed Case (Hawaii), Jim Costa (Calif.) and Kurt Schrader (Ore.). This is as firm a threat as this group of moderate Democrats has made. And if they hold together, they can prevent Pelosi from passing the House Democratic budget resolution the week of Aug. 23. Remember: Pelosi’s plan is to pass the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure package after the Senate clears a massive Democratic reconciliation package this fall. These Democratic moderates are threatening to blow that up. Pelosi can only afford to lose three Democratic votes and still pass the budget resolution through her chamber. The speaker and her leadership team also face heavy pressure from progressives — a much larger faction in the Democratic Caucus — to delay a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill until the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package is complete. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and others are concerned that moderates won’t support the reconciliation package if the infrastructure bill is allowed to pass on its own. They want linkage between the two measures in order to ensure that moderates support both. So this latest missive from the moderates raises the stakes for Pelosi, and she’ll have to find a way to balance the competing demands from the factions among her rank-and-file members. A similar scenario is playing out among Senate Democrats, where Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) have already declared that they won’t back a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, even though they both voted for the budget resolution that cleared the Senate this week. PRESENTED BY ALTRIA Helping prevent youth access. Kids shouldn’t use any tobacco products. While underage use of traditional tobacco products is at historic lows, more must be done to address underage vaping. That’s why Altria strongly supported legislation to raise the minimum age for all tobacco products to 21. See how we’re moving. THE OTHER SIDE OF PENNSYLVANIA AVE. Choppy waters for President Biden Let’s call this what it is — a rough August for President Joe Biden. Yes, the Senate approved the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill Biden endorsed. Getting that agreement together included some difficult negotiations by top Biden aides, especially counselor Steve Ricchetti. Senate Democrats then unanimously backed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution, the first step in enacting Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Family Plan. The Child Tax Credit included in Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan had a big impact in July, new data shows. Job growth has been strong all summer, and unemployment has fallen steadily. For a president whose tagline during his first big speech to Congress in April was “Jobs, jobs, jobs,” this is very welcome news. On other fronts, however, Biden is getting knocked around pretty hard. The administration’s messaging has been inconsistent as well.The White House seems to be reacting to events, instead of leading them, as it did during Biden’s first few months in office. This happens to every administration at some point. The key question is how long it lasts. Let’s look at the big issues driving headlines this week. → Afghanistan: The looming collapse of the Ghani government in Afghanistan has shocked the White House and Capitol Hill. The speed of the Taliban advance has been stunning. Biden was forced to order thousands of Marines and U.S. Army troops back to Kabul to protect the evacuation of U.S. personnel. Republicans and former Trump administration officials have pounced on the crisis, accusing Biden of mismanaging the exit from America’s longest war even as the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches. Biden complains that these critics don’t have any better answer than leaving U.S. forces in the country to fight on indefinitely. But it’s still a huge problem for the White House. The specter of Saigon 1975 haunts American leaders. → Covid: The resurgence of Covid due to the Delta variant threatens to turn Biden’s biggest early success on its head. Case numbers are soaring, hospitalizations and deaths are rising. What was supposed to be “Hot Vax Summer” suddenly ain’t that hot. In large part, it isn’t Biden’s fault. The White House put enormous amounts of time and money into vaccination programs, while the worst hotspots are in red states with low vaccination rates. Yet the CDC’s handling of the mask issue was poor. Children are heading back to school across the country, and that’s turned into a huge tug-of-war over masks being played out in school board meetings everywhere. Whether to bar the unvaccinated from businesses and public events is another growing conflict with huge political overtones. Booster shots may be needed for the already vaccinated, another serious challenge. The White House has also publicly squabbled with Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, during the crisis. It’s bad all around. → Immigration: The Biden administration has never gotten a grip on this issue since Biden was sworn in. And it keeps getting worse. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced on Thursday that more than 212,000 migrants were detained trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in July, the highest monthly total in two decades and a 13% increase from June. Nearly 19,000 of those migrants were unaccompanied children under 18, an all-time record. The administration is already having a difficult time caring for the more than 15,000 children now in U.S. custody. Some Republicans have claimed that the growing wave of migrants is responsible for the Covid resurgence, although there’s no evidence for that. But even the fact that Republicans are trying to use this argument shows the administration’s vulnerability on the issue. Meanwhile, progressives are pushing for a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of Dreamers, TPS holders and migrant farm workers as part of the $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” package. Whether those provisions can withstand the parliamentary and political challenges of the reconciliation process is unclear. What is clear, though, is the left is going to keep pushing Biden on this issue too. → Inflation: This story ran on CNN yesterday: "Key inflation measure hits new record high — yet again." That’s a headline no president ever wants to see. Again, most of this isn’t Biden’s fault. A lot of the inflationary pressure is caused by pandemic-related supply chain problems. It’s still an issue for the White House to deal with, however, both politically and policy wise. Republicans are blaming Biden and Democrats for pouring trillions of dollars of federal money into the U.S. economy, triggering growing inflationary pressure. And this is before the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” package is even crafted. ICYMI … THE BOUNCEBACK This week we launched our fifth and final profile as part of The Bounceback. During the last 10 weeks, we took you behind the scenes, telling you how public officials led their communities out of the pandemic. We hope you enjoyed this project as much as we did. Check out these profiles of Miami’s Mayor Francis Suarez, San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed, Oklahoma City’s Mayor David Holt, Colorado’s Governor Jared Polis, and North Carolina’s Governor Roy Cooper. WHAT THE NATION IS WAKING UP TO Afghanistan on the fronts PRESENTED BY ALTRIA Moving beyond smoking. Altria’s companies are leading the way in moving adult smokers away from cigarettes. See how we’re moving BEHIND THE SCENES Top House Democratic aides to White House today Key Capitol Hill Democratic aides will visit the White House today to strategize with Biden administration officials about the upcoming budget reconciliation package. Aides from House committees that will be involved in the drafting of the $3.5 trillion bill will meet with White House Legislative Affairs Director Louisa Terrell and other senior administration officials, according to Democratic sources. We’re told top aides from Transportation and Infrastructure, Administration and Ways and Means will be at 1600 Pennsylvania. The House is scheduled to return to session the week of Aug. 23 to take up the budget resolution that includes instructions for the reconciliation package. The Senate approved the measure earlier this week on a party line 50-49 vote, and the results in the House will likely be just as close. As we explained above, some House Democratic moderates are balking at both the cost of the package and the pay fors. Democratic congressional leaders plan to roll back all — or a big chunk — of the 2017 GOP tax cut. That legislation was also passed using reconciliation. Both sides described the meeting as an opportunity to talk before the madness of September sets in. The House and Senate committees are scheduled to finish drafting their portions of the reconciliation package a mere 33 days from today, although sticking to that deadline is going to very difficult. MOMENTS President Joe Biden is in Wilmington. 10 a.m.: Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing. 1 p.m.: Biden will leave Wilmington for Camp David. CLIP FILE NYT → News Analysis: “Census Shows a Nation That Resembles Its Future More Than Its Past,” by Nate Cohn → “Chuck Schumer Has Found a Way to Get It Done. So Far,” by Carl Hulse and Nick Fandos: “Senator Chuck Schumer of New York ducked into the Democratic cloakroom on Tuesday to take a call on his old-school flip phone from President Biden. Senators were basking in a rare bipartisan success on infrastructure and gearing up for a more partisan budget brawl — and the president wanted to tell the majority leader he was a ‘magician.’ “‘Not yet, Mr. President,’ Mr. Schumer objected from one of the private sanctuary’s phone booths, according to an official familiar with the call. ‘Only one ear of the rabbit is out of the hat.’” WaPo → “Booming Latino populations are helping GOP states like Texas gain new seats in Congress,” by Colby Itkowitz and Harry Stevens → “Census data shows Maryland is now the East Coast’s most diverse state, while D.C. is Whiter,” by Marissa J. Lang and Ted Mellnik AP → “Taliban take another southern provincial capital in sweep,” by Tameem Akhgar and Rahim Faiez Politico → “Four Senate Republicans wait on reelection bids as majority hangs in balance,” by Burgess Everett PRESENTED BY ALTRIA Kids shouldn’t use any tobacco products. Today, underage use of traditional tobacco products is at historic and generational lows, but more must be done to address underage vaping rates. Enjoying Punchbowl News AM? Subscribe 10 friends with your unique link (below) and get a Punchbowl News hat! Your referral link is: Or share via You currently have: 0 referrals
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