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PRESENTED BY

BY JOHN BRESNAHAN, ANNA PALMER AND JAKE SHERMAN
WITH MAX COHEN AND CHRISTIAN HALL

THE TOP

Good morning, and happy Monday. The bipartisan infrastructure bill is out, and after months of fits and starts, is the pending business on the Senate floor. 

First of all, here is the bill in all its glory — all 2,702 pages of it. It was released around 9 p.m. last night, and we sent a quick update to Premium subscribers last night with our initial take on what’s next. (BTW, sign up for Premium for our three updates each day plus special editions — we did two this weekend.)

There’s tens of billions of dollars in there for all the traditional areas of infrastructure spending — roads, highways, bridges, rail and airports — as well as funding for broadband, updates to the nation’s power grid, combating climate change, clean energy research and electric vehicle charging stations. Amtrak will get a huge boost, the most in decades. It’s a hugely ambitious piece of legislation.

Here’s what we’re hearing:

→ Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is eager to finish consideration of the legislation this week. Several senators are also going to want to go to the funeral for the late Sen. Mike Enzi scheduled for Friday in Wyoming. So the Senate is going to have to finish before or after that. We’re betting after, because it’s the Senate.

→ When we caught up with people in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s world last night, what we heard was that Republicans are going to want the ability to offer a number of amendments without a deadline. This will almost certainly be a point of contention between Schumer and McConnell, as well as rank-and-file senators in both parties. 

→ Remember: It’s very likely that Schumer and McConnell will work out an agreement on who offers which amendment and how many amendments the Senate will consider. This could take some time to sort out. The Senate comes in at noon today, but no votes are scheduled yet.

→ Also: There will be two more cloture votes on this legislation before final passage. That amounts to 60 hours of post-cloture time that the Senate will need to get through. The Democratic leadership will work to try to get senators opposed to the legislation to yield back time, but that’s far from a sure thing.

→ Several sources told us that the bipartisan group struggled with the language dealing with cryptocurrency. From our reading of the bill, the legislation calls for cryptocurrency exchanges to pay penalties if they don’t follow reporting requirements. Congress is predictably a bit behind the curve when it comes to the burgeoning crypto universe, and this is an early sign about just how important it will be to follow how lawmakers wrestle with this new technology.

→ Another area of concern was the broadband section, which leaders wrestled with for days. This language was crafted by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). But it was also key to Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), whose Commerce Committee has jurisdiction. One of the issues is inclusion of gender identity language that’s mentioned in that section of the proposal.

→ Earmarks: Critics of the proposal are on the lookout for earmarks from the G10 group or Democratic leaders.

→ This bill hasn’t been fully scored yet. This will remain a problem for many Republicans, and even some Democrats.

→ When the Senate finishes infrastructure, Schumer said he will immediately take up the 2022 budget resolution with reconciliation instructions.

The Coverage

WaPo: “Senate finishing crafting $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure proposal, setting delicate debate in motion,” by Tony Romm … AP: “It’s in – and big: Senators produce $1T infrastructure bill,” by Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro

THE MONEY GAME

Sinema raises cash off of her infrastructure "weekend work

Here’s a fundraising email from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), looking to cash in on her infrastructure work.

INSIDE THE LEADERSHIP

The Pelosi-McCarthy relationship is really bad. And it’s going to get worse

The last few days have seen the relationship between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy hit a new low — and that wasn’t easy. It may get worse, especially if Democrats try to subpoena McCarthy or other House Republicans to testify about their dealings with former President Donald Trump during the Jan. 6 insurrection. So let’s look at the state of the Pelosi-McCarthy interactions for a minute, and then discuss subpoenas and what could happen.

Last week started to go really bad when Pelosi said McCarthy was a “moron” after the California Republican complained about Democrats’ decision to reinstate a mask requirement on the House floor. 

McCarthy responded by talking about Paul Pelosi’s finances — the speaker’s husband made some tech investments recently that made headlines — and repeated his line that Pelosi “is a lame-duck speaker.”

Then over the weekend, McCarthy was heavily criticized for something he said at a Tennessee GOP fundraiser. In accepting a mock speaker’s gavel, McCarthy told the crowd “I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. … It’ll be hard not to hit her with it," NBC reported.

It’s a line McCarthy has used before, but it blew up this time. Some Democrats even called on McCarthy to resign. That’s not going to happen, of course, and there’s some element of payback for the “moron” gaffe. But it shows you where things stand between them.

How did it get so bad? Well, there’s pre-Jan. 6, and post-Jan. 6.

Pre-Jan. 6, Pelosi just didn’t seem to care too much about McCarthy, to be honest. She liked John Boehner, was ok with Paul Ryan and Dennis Hastert, and loathed Tom DeLay (DeLay was never GOP leader, but we just have to mention that.) She repeatedly bashed McCarthy and Republicans over their fealty to Trump. And she sure didn’t treat McCarthy like her peer, or a possible successor in the speaker’s chair.

McCarthy thought Pelosi used the Covid-19 crisis to extend her power. Proxy voting on the floor was a huge problem; McCarthy led a lawsuit against it. He objected when Democrats eliminated the motion to recommit also, another move he saw as a Pelosi power play.

But House Republicans did much better than anyone predicted in the November elections despite Trump’s loss, leaving Pelosi with a razor-thin majority. The dynamic between them changed. McCarthy’s floor speech on the first day of the new Congress was a proverbial swing at Pelosi — he wasn’t promising any cooperation.

And then the Jan. 6 insurrection happened. What especially outraged Democrats was that McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise along with dozens of their fellow Republicans voted to object to President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory even after Trump supporters had ransacked the Capitol. For Democrats it was too much, a Rubicon that had been crossed.

Pelosi installed metal detectors outside the House chamber — because Democrats feared some of their GOP colleagues were armed — and fined members who didn’t comply with the policy by taking money straight from their paychecks. Democrats also kicked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) off her committees over her past violent rhetoric. Democrats loved it, Republicans see a speaker run amok.

The Jan. 6 select committee is another flashpoint. Democrats felt that McCarthy was bargaining in bad faith over the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, shifting the goalposts every time they agreed to his demands. McCarthy repudiated the deal that Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) struck with Democrats over the commission, which further angered them before Senate Republicans killed the plan outright at McCarthy’s urging. So when McCarthy named Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.) to the Jan. 6 select committee, Pelosi had no qualms about striking them. This infuriated McCarthy, and the two had a yelling match over the phone.

Which leads us to now — will the Jan. 6 select committee subpoena McCarthy, Jordan, and other Republicans? The very idea of the House minority leader being subpoenaed by the majority bothers many lawmakers. It shows you far we are from comity these days up on the Hill.

There’s nothing in House rules or the ethics manual about enforcing a congressional subpoena against a sitting member, and there doesn’t seem to be any precedent for doing so in a non-ethics related case. There’s no way Democrats could use the Ethics Committee to enforce a subpoena since Republicans control half that panel. And what if McCarthy refused to comply? Would the select committee take him to court? Could the full House compel him? Too early to tell, but lots to ponder here. Just know it would signal a further breakdown in relations between the two parties, and between McCarthy and Pelosi. 

Our friends Karoun Demirjian, Marianna Sotomayor and Jacqueline Alemany wrote about this the other day for the Washington Post and went over some of these same issues.

COMING ATTRACTIONS

Luke Russert’s new book

Here are some new details about our good pal Luke Russert’s new book, which is expected out in 2023. CAA represented Russert in this deal.

Luke Russert, formerly of NBC News, has inked a deal with Harper Horizon to publish a memoir of his travels to 67 countries and six continents. The book will detail Russert’s decision in 2016 to leave his successful career as a TV journalist to travel the world, to understand his own identity, and come to grips with the grief surrounding his father Tim Russert’s untimely death. The book will explain how his exploration of diverse cultures in the world beyond the Beltway imparted lessons and wisdom that Russert says fulfilled him and brought a needed sense of the ways we’re all connected to each other. Expected release in 2023.

MOMENTS

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

12:30 p.m.: Biden will arrive at the White House.

1 p.m.: Jen Psaki will brief reporters.

1:15 p.m.: Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will get a Covid-19 briefing.

4 p.m.: The Covid-19 response team will brief reporters.

6:45 p.m.: Biden will speak at a virtual DNC reception. 

CLIP FILE

NYT

→ “2 House Races in Ohio Will Test Democratic Divisions and Trump’s Sway,” by Jeremy Peters

WaPo

→ “The quiet Biden-GOP talks behind the infrastructure deal,” by Seung Min Kim

→ “GOP lawmaker who once spurned masks urges people to take covid-19 seriously after eight-month illness,” by Kim Bellware

AP

→ “Evictions expected to spike as federal moratorium ends,” by Michael Casey in Boston

Politico

→ “Special election ignites battle over who is ‘welcome’ in Black caucus,” by Ally Mutnick, Maya King and Heather Caygle

POP UP CONVERSATION WITH CECILIA ROUSE

Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Cecilia Rouse joined us for a virtual pop-up Punchbowl News event Friday morning. The event focused on expanding access to paid leave, the economic impacts of a potential infrastructure bill and President Joe Biden’s human infrastructure legislative priorities. Following the conversation, we had a fireside chat with Dawn Huckelbridge, director of Paid Leave for All, and former Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) centered on their advocacy for paid leave. Watch the event.

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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images