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PRESENTED BY

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

THE TOP

Good Monday morning, and welcome to the last full week of August. 

Our theme today as the House briefly returns here to Washington after a more than three-week absence: The Democrats’ two dilemmas. 

Afghanistan and the $3.5 trillion budget resolution are different in magnitude and complexity, but both are critical issues for President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The budget resolution has the potential to be resolved quickly — Democratic leaders hope! Afghanistan will take weeks, months or even years to fully sort out, and we have new details about how Republicans are eager to investigate the withdrawal. 

Our goal this morning is to unpack the people, politics and strategy behind these two hulking problems

We’re going to start with the budget resolution first, then we’ll look at Afghanistan.

THE BIDEN AGENDA

A true staredown on budget and infrastructure

At this moment, early Monday morning in Washington, the House Democratic leadership doesn’t have the votes to pass their budget resolution, according to Democratic lawmakers and aides.

Let’s repeat: Democrats don’t have the votes for the budget, the passage of which would unlock the bulk of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, particularly his multi-trillion “human infrastructure” proposals.

Two weeks of brinkmanship has brought Pelosi and a group of House Democratic moderates, led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.), Kurt Schrader (Ore.), Jared Golden (Maine) and Ed Case (Hawaii), to a hell of a standoff. 

That’s because these nine moderates are demanding a vote on the $1 trillion bipartisan Senate infrastructure bill before voting for the budget resolution. Pelosi hasn’t blinked and is betting Gottheimer’s crew will fold. That’s a risky bet with only a three-seat cushion. 

Key members of the moderate crew told us Sunday night they won’t, under any circumstances, back down. Schrader has suggested he won’t be voting for the budget no matter what and Golden has been a reliable vote against packages of this size. So Democrats’ true margin may be closer to one vote.

There was a lot of back-and-forth among House Democrats throughout the weekend, but no resolution of the dispute.

Of course, there’s still time for accommodation or late lobbying by Biden to turn things around. We expect to see the president personally get involved today by calling Democratic lawmakers, according to sources. We expect moderates to tell Biden that if they had an infrastructure vote today, they could attract Republican yes votes — potentially an attractive proposition for the president.

And we never, ever bet against Pelosi. We’ve seen her get out of jams too many times to believe she will be derailed here. Democratic insiders also caution that the nine moderates are “wobbly,” so at least some of them are likely to cave, which could put pressure on the whole group to fall in line. Our reporting doesn’t suggest that wobbliness, but the leadership often hears different things than we do. 

The nine wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post Sunday night with the headline: "Let’s take the win. Let’s do infrastructure first."

There’s a chance Democrats will find a way to resolve this situation. It may not be pretty, but it will still be a “W.” And as one Democrat put it to us on Sunday, “Joe Biden could really use a win right now.”

Let’s also note that when House Democrats left town in late July, moderates and progressives were fighting over an extension of the eviction moratorium, which was about to expire on July 31. Biden — under heavy pressure from Pelosi and progressives — eventually took executive action to extend the moratorium until Oct. 3, although the administration has faced legal challenges on that move. Yet it bought Biden and Democratic leaders needed time on an issue that progressives were up in arms over.

But the stalemate is real here. Pelosi has taken a hard line throughout this process, saying repeatedly that she won’t allow a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill until the Senate passes a massive reconciliation package focused on social programs. That won’t happen until October at the earliest. That’s also the position espoused by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the majority of Pelosi’s rank-and-file members. 

Gottheimer and his fellow Democratic moderates, for their part, say they won’t support the Democratic budget resolution — key to passing big pieces of Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Family Plan — until they get an infrastructure vote. At the moment, these two positions are intractable. 

Pelosi has tried to shame the moderates into supporting the resolution, and that hasn’t worked. There have been efforts from other senior Democrats, such as Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney (N.Y.) leaning on the moderates, as our friend Sarah Ferris at Politico reported on Friday. Those calls from Maloney have angered moderates to no end. Progressive outside groups have targeted them as well. Pelosi offered them a quasi-deal — vote for a rule outlining the floor debate on the budget resolution, John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which shows she’s serious about giving them their vote eventually. That’s the current approach. Yet even with Biden and House committee chairs endorsing that option, the moderates haven’t given in.

So that’s where things stand for now. Moderates may vote for the rule — so they don’t get accused of voting against the John Lewis Voting Rights Act — but oppose the resolution. The rule is only part of the show here. The rule could pass and the budget may still fail. Some Democrats suggested to us Sunday night that the rule is in jeopardy no matter what. 

This is quite the tricky situation for the Gottheimer crew. If they fold here, the group won’t be taken seriously in their future demands. But if they hold the line, there’ll be some in the party who blame them for delaying the Biden agenda. Pelosi and her leadership team — atop the Democratic Caucus for nearly two decades  — will have their persuasive powers tested as the party tries to save its majority. 

The House Rules Committee will meet at 11 a.m. to start work on the rule for floor debate. House Democratic leaders will be meeting later this afternoon, before the floor vote. And there will be a Democratic Caucus meeting Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. We expect today to be one of those long, tumultuous Capitol Hill days.

We’ll be watching all of this very closely today.

The Coverage:

→ WaPo’s Tony Romm: “‘Curveballs and obstacles’ face Pelosi this week as Democrats spar over $3.5 trillion budget plan”: “‘I will vote against the budget resolution, as we’ve said, as the nine of us committed publicly,’ Gottheimer said on Saturday. ‘We will vote against a budget resolution if the infrastructure package isn’t brought up first.’”

→ NYT’s Jonathan Weisman: “Deeply Divided, House Democrats Battle Over Priorities and Politics”

→ WSJ’s Kristina Peterson: “Pelosi, Centrist Democrats in Standoff With Key Vote Ahead”

BEHIND THE SCENES

News: House Republicans plot floor action on Afghanistan 

The House Republican leadership is privately mulling over strategies to force floor votes on the situation in Afghanistan, as the U.S. evacuation of tens of thousands of American citizens and Afghan allies from the Kabul airport continues.

The House GOP is in the minority, so their options are limited. But they’re considering several procedural tactics, including motions to recommit and a vote on the previous question, as a way to force votes. These motions call for imposing stricter reporting requirements on the number of Afghan refugees, the status of tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military hardware left in-country and what exactly is President Joe Biden’s plan to get all American citizens and equipment out of the Taliban-controlled nation. 

The Republican’s longer term strategy is to try to use the National Defense Authorization Act — the annual military policy bill — to force the Biden administration into an after-action report on what went wrong in Afghanistan. GOP leaders want the Pentagon, State Department and the White House to cough up documents detailing the run up to the disastrous U.S. withdrawal, as well as the administration’s plans for dealing with any future threats from the troubled Southwest Asian country. And an even longer-term view: If the GOP takes back the majority in 2022, we anticipate that this will be something they will focus on.

So far, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and top House Republicans have largely ignored calls from their fringe elements — and former President Donald Trump — demanding Biden’s resignation or impeachment hearings, although they have questioned his fitness for office. McCarthy has complained to us and other media outlets about the lack of information Congress has received on the crisis. 

To counter the GOP criticism, and to provide answers to similar questions from her own rank-and-file, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has pushed for both classified and unclassified briefings by senior administration officials. On Tuesday morning at 10:30 a.m., Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chair Mark Milley and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines will hold a classified briefing for all House members. Pelosi has also asked for a “Gang of 8” briefing, which is the four elected party leaders from each chamber and the chair and ranking member of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

During a press conference on Sunday night, Biden suggested U.S. forces may stay beyond the current Aug. 31 deadline if necessary. Biden also said roughly 11,000 people were taken out this weekend, showing the pace of the evacuation has picked up. Nearly 28,000 have been evacuated since the operation began on Aug. 14.

The Pentagon also announced on Sunday that it has invoked a rarely used federal law to order six U.S. airlines to provide 18 civilian aircraft to fly evacuees out of airports in Europe and the Middle East. Those flights have already begun.

And Biden once again tried to respond to the tidal wave of criticism, both from inside the United States and internationally, over the administration’s handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan following nearly 20 years of war.

"Let me be clear, the evacuation of thousands of people from Kabul is going to be hard and painful no matter when it started or when we began," Biden told reporters at the White House. "Would’ve been true if we started a month ago or a month from now. There is no way to evacuate this many people without pain and loss and heartbreaking images you see on television. It’s just a fact. My heart aches for those people you see. We are proving, though, that we can move thousands of people per day out of Kabul."

Polls released by CBS and NBC over the weekend showed Biden’s approval rating taking a hit, mostly over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has surged again due to the spread of the Delta variant. While still more popular than Trump ever was, the bump that Biden got from passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and the initial success of the U.S. vaccination program has worn off. Biden now faces a very difficult couple of months politically and legislatively, as do Democratic congressional leaders, and the Afghanistan situation will only make that more volatile in the short term. 

→ NYT: “Chaos Persists at Kabul Airport as Taliban Discuss New Government,” by Roger Cohen

ABOVE THE FOLD OF THE PAPER OF RECORD

BEHIND THE SCENES

Senate Republicans plot two posh conferences this fall

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has planned two summits for this fall: the one-year-out action summit in Palm Beach, Fla., and a policy summit in Sea Island, Ga. We got our hands on the schedules for you — those are below.

Some highlights: at the Palm Beach event, former Speaker John Boehner will sit down for a fireside chat with golf legend Jack Nicklaus. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will be at both events. And David Perdue, the former GOP senator from Georgia, is scheduled to appear at the Sea Island event. Perdue lives in Sea Island.

MOMENTS

9:30 a.m.: President Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing.

10 a.m.: Biden will meet with his national security team about Afghanistan.

2 p.m.: Jen Psaki will brief.

3:30 p.m.: Biden will welcome the WNBA champion Seattle Storm to the White House. … The House Freedom Caucus will hold a news conference on infrastructure legislation.

5 p.m.: The House comes in for legislative business.

CLIP FILE

NYT

→ News Analysis on A1: “The U.S. Is Getting a Crash Course in Scientific Uncertainty,” by Apoorva Mandavilli 

→ “Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s Top Host, Extends Her Contract,” by Emily Steel

→ “A Tidal Wave of Water and at Least 22 Deaths as Floodwaters Ravage Rural Tennessee,” by Rick Rojas and Michael Levenson

WaPo

→ “Cori Bush tests the bounds of what an activist turned lawmaker can accomplish,” by Marianna Sotomayor in St. Louis

WSJ

→ “More Children Are Hospitalized With Covid-19, and Doctors Fear It Will Get Worse,” by Sarah Toy and Julie Wernau

AP 

→ “US VP Harris: Focus must stay on Afghan evacuation,” by Alexandra Jaffe in Singapore

→ Henri hurls rain as system settles atop swamped Northeast,” by David Klepper, Michael Kunzelman and David Porter

Politico

→ “Deadlines burn Biden,” by Christopher Cadelago and Natasha Korecki

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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images