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PRESENTED BY

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

THE TOP

Happy Tuesday. The government shuts down at midnight Thursday, and we still have no clear idea how Congress will resolve this looming crisis. More on that in a moment.

Let’s just spend a second reviewing where lawmakers left off Monday evening on advancing President Joe Biden’s agenda.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi went into a caucus meeting in the Capitol basement and encouraged her rank-and-file Democrats to rally around Biden’s legislative plans. 

Then, in a reversal of her previous public comments, Pelosi said House Democrats can no longer wait until a reconciliation package is approved — or even the outlines of the mammoth legislation are settled — before voting in favor of the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. It’s a shift for Pelosi — a turnabout of her position that the two bills were directly linked — and presents her with a massive challenge from her left flank.

Several dozen progressives have declared they won’t vote for the infrastructure bill until the $3.5 trillion reconciliation is passed by the Senate or some “ironclad” deal is hashed out by party leaders. But Pelosi is now pressing them to change their view and support the infrastructure bill anyway, saying the events of the last few weeks have made clear that the House-Senate-White House negotiations on the reconciliation package aren’t far enough along to justify that stance anymore. She and a number of other top House Democrats are urging progressives to take a win where they can — for Biden and the party.

“But here’s the thing: I told all of you that we wouldn’t go on to the BIF [bipartisan infrastructure framework until] we had the reconciliation bill passed by the Senate. We were right on schedule to do all of that, until 10 days ago, a week ago, when I heard the news that this number had to come down,” Pelosi told her rank-and-file Democrats, according to a source familiar with her comments. 

“We had to accommodate the changes that were being necessitated. And we cannot be ready to say until the Senate passed the bill, we can’t do BIF.”

For what it ‘s worth, it was clear the topline number for the reconciliation package would have to come down more than 10 days ago. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) said this in July. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) signaled the same in August.

One thing we heard Monday night from multiple sources in Pelosi’s leadership circle is that the speaker can’t do this alone. Pelosi will need Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to push Manchin and Sinema to negotiate on a topline number. Especially Biden. Without that, Pelosi can’t make significant headway with progressives, since that number will drive many of the policy decisions inside the legislative package itself.

Pelosi alluded to this dynamic during her remarks before House Democrats on Monday.

“[W]we’re still waiting for the number because you cannot prove the design on the legislation without the number,” Pelosi said to the caucus. “And the president is working on that piece. He’s working on that piece. “

We all know that Pelosi is a one-woman legislative bulldozer. We’ve seen it. She bulldozed the moderates earlier this year when they threatened to take down the budget resolution. Now she’s going to have to do the same with the progressives. 

Yet this is also clear — Pelosi is short of the votes she needs to pass the infrastructure bill. We won’t bet against her, no one who knows Pelosi ever would. But she clearly has a lot of ground to make up inside the caucus between now and Thursday. 

Pelosi is basically asking progressives to trust her that Manchin and Sinema will agree to a package that the broader Democratic Party will back. That’s an awfully big ask. The only insurance policy progressives have is the infrastructure bill. Why would they give that up at this point — especially when they have no true deadline.

This might be Pelosi’s legislative challenge yet. It clearly is the most high-profile intra-party fight she’s faced since the passage of Obamacare more than a decade ago. Look for Pelosi to keep up the pressure on progressives during the next couple days, pulling in Biden when she to do so.

House Republicans plot 

This is new: Our House Republican sources say they’ll force Pelosi to get 218 Democratic votes for the infrastructure bill before cutting GOP lawmakers free to vote yes. This is a big deal. This means Pelosi may have to get to the threshold of final passage with no GOP support. Any Republican votes for the measure will only materialize after Pelosi proves she can do it.

If Pelosi can’t pass the bill on her own, House Republican insiders tell us House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his top lieutenants will work hard to make sure it’s not Republican votes that push her over the top. At least four Republicans — Reps. Fred Upton (Mich.), Tom Reed (N.Y.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and Don Young (Alaska) — have declared publicly that they will vote for the bill, which passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support. But McCarthy will have the ability to hold Republicans against the bill if Democrats are squirming. 

If Pelosi does get 218 on her own, more than 10 Republican lawmakers will jump on board and vote yes, our sources tell us.

This kind of gamesmanship is a classic floor tactic used by leadership in both parties since the dawn of time, but rarely has there been so much at stake. If Pelosi and the White House fail to push through the infrastructure bill, then that will jeopardize passage of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, the key to President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda. With Biden reeling in the polls, a twin defeat like that could be devastating for the party and his presidency.

SHUTDOWN CITY

Remember: The government shuts down Thursday. 

With the fight over President Joe Biden’s agenda taking up so much oxygen, it’s easy to forget that government funding runs out on Thursday and the nation will hit the debt limit in a month.

The Senate rejected two bills Monday: A Democratic effort to fund the government until early December that also extends the debt limit until Dec. 2022, and a GOP effort to fund the government until December without the debt limit.

Following that stalemate, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said this from the Senate floor: “Keeping the government open and preventing a default is vital to our country’s future. And we’ll be taking further action to prevent this from happening this week.”

There are a few options at hand here for Schumer and the White House, none of which are very palatable to Democrats:

→ Schumer left himself the option of re-voting on the debt limit and government funding bill — the same legislation that failed yesterday. There’s really no reason for him to do this besides shaming Republicans, but he could choose to do so. If Schumer does, it’s a purely political maneuver because we know it will fail.

→ The easiest thing for Schumer to do is to bring up the two-month stopgap without the debt limit attached. That would pass the Senate easily and would fly through the House as well. But it wouldn’t resolve the debt-limit problem for Democrats. They still have to figure out a solution; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wants Schumer to do it via a debt limit-only reconciliation package. Democrats could push that through Congress on their own in a couple weeks.

→ Schumer may also look to fund federal agencies for a shorter period of time, say two to three weeks, in order to line up a government shutdown with the debt limit-deadline. This would create a massive financial cliff in the middle of October. It’s a creative idea, we guess, but it seems exceedingly unlikely to move Republicans to vote for the debt limit. Senate Republicans apparently would vote for this, GOP insiders suggest, because it will spark chaos and that has the chance of interrupting the Democratic agenda.

The question we keep getting from everyone is “Will the government shut down at midnight Thursday?” It shouldn’t, quite frankly. There are lots of options that would sidestep a shutdown. But this is Congress, so we don’t take anything for granted. Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi have said repeatedly that it won’t happen, but this slow-motion standoff hasn’t been resolved yet, and federal employees have been warned about the possibility it may happen.

Schumer and his fellow Senate Democrats remain furious about McConnell’s handling of this issue, although there doesn’t seem to be much they can do about it. Yet it’s impossible to overstate the level of frustration among Democrats right now. Democrats say McConnell is cynically using this issue to force Democrats up in 2022, such as Sens. Maggie Hassan (N.H.) and Mark Kelly (Ariz.), to vote for a debt-limit increase. While McConnell responds this all about GOP objections to Democrats’ tax and spending plans, the atmosphere inside the Senate is especially tense at the moment.

ABSENT

Where is Dianne Feinstein? She hasn’t voted in two weeks

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) missed yesterday’s vote on the government funding bill, and the press corps has taken note that she’s been absent from Capitol Hill for some time. She missed votes last week, as well.

At 88, Feinstein is the oldest senator by several months over Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who just announced he’s running for reelection.

Feinstein stepped down in January as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee following a public controversy over her handling of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination for the Supreme Court. She’s become increasingly frail in recent years, and some Democrats have called on her to step down so California Gov. Gavin Newsom could name a replacement. This possibility even became a minor issue during the recent failed GOP bid to force Newsom’s recall.

The Hill’s Jordain Carney got a comment from Feinstein’s office.

FRONTS

MOMENTS

9:30 a.m.: Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie will be in front of Senate Armed Services to talk about Afghanistan.

10 a.m.: House Minority Whip Steve Scalise will hold a news conference after the House Republican Conference meeting.

10:15 a.m.: House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries will hold a news conference after the closed Democratic meeting.

10:30 a.m.: President Joe Biden will receive his daily intelligence briefing.

12:30 p.m.: The Covid-19 response team will brief.

1 p.m.: Speaker Nancy Pelosi will hold a climate-related event on the Capitol steps. 

1:30 p.m.: Jen Psaki will brief.

2 p.m.: The post-Senate lunch stakeouts.

CLIP FILE

NYT

→ “Four Jagged Puzzle Pieces and a Few Weeks for Democrats to Assemble Them,” by Jonathan Weisman

WaPo

→ “Senior Democrats’ push for powerful climate tool collides with political realities,” by Jeff Stein and Steven Mufson

→ “Military leaders head to Capitol Hill for first public accounting of Afghanistan exit,” Karoun Demirjian

WSJ

→ “U.S. Asked Russia About Offer of Bases to Monitor Afghan Terror Threat,” by Michael R. Gordon and Gordon Lubold

→ “Fed Leaders Eric Rosengren, Robert Kaplan to Resign Following Trading Controversy,” by Michael S. Derby

AP

→ “Pentagon leaders to face Congress on Afghan pullout decision,” by Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor

Politico

→ “‘People are going to get skittish:’ White House sweats over McAuliffe,” by Chris Cadelago, Natasha Korecki and Maya King

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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images