Opinion | How Pelosi can give the rebels a way out of the hostage crisis they created - The Washington Post

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What happens when the Democratic Party desperately wants to pass two significant spending bills, but the party’s margin in the House is so small that even nine conservative Democrats can hold the whole project hostage?

We’re finding out right now, as a group led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) is trying to use its leverage to force an immediate vote on the bipartisan infrastructure plan already passed by the Senate. They are threatening to vote against moving the process forward on the much larger $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill — the first step toward eventual passage of that bill — to compel immediate passage of the infrastructure measure.

It turns out there may be a way out of the jam: One that involves giving the conservative Democrats a concession on timing, while preserving the two-track strategy.

The trouble right now is that other Democrats don’t trust the conservative Democrats — or moderates in the Senate — to stay on board with the reconciliation bill, which includes extensive measures building “human” infrastructure and addressing climate change.

Thus was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) “two-track” strategy devised: The House would only vote on the infrastructure bill after the Senate sends over the reconciliation bill.

This locks both factions in together: Conservative and moderate Democrats must support the reconciliation bill to get the infrastructure bill passed; progressives must support the infrastructure bill to get the reconciliation one passed.

The conservative Democrats are badly misrepresenting the situation, however. In an interview with The Atlantic, Gottheimer laughably claimed House progressives are “holding the president’s priority hostage.”

This is nonsense: President Biden has endorsed the two-track strategy: He recently declared that he hopes House Democrats will "eventually put two bills on my desk, one on infrastructure, and one on reconciliation.”

And on Monday, a White House spokesman stressed that Biden wants “both bills on his desk.” While that’s a bit vague, it does demonstrate that Biden actively wants the House to move the reconciliation process forward.

So it’s absurd for Gottheimer to pretend progressives are the ones holding the process “hostage.” In reality, he and his rebels are doing that, to gain lopsided leverage to downsize the spending and taxes in the reconciliation bill later.

So what happens now? The conservative Democrats may simply fold, and vote to move the reconciliation bill forward. But it may also be necessary to give them a way to save face first.

Several procedural experts point to a way to do that: The House could pass the infrastructure bill and move the reconciliation process forward, but Pelosi could effectively refrain from sending the infrastructure bill to the president until the Senate sends over a completed reconciliation bill.

Sarah Binder, a congressional expert at the Brookings Institution, tells us that the relevant House rule stipulates that the Speaker “shall” sign a bill that has passed both chambers (as would be the case with the infrastructure bill), but doesn’t specify when.

Binder also points to a Congressional Research Service report stating that the Speaker “may sign” such bills “at any time.” That would mean the bill doesn’t get sent to the president, which Pelosi could wait on until the Senate sends the reconciliation bill, Binder says.

“There does not appear to be any prohibition in House rules for such a delay,” Binder tells us.

This can be looked at two ways. In one sense, it makes the conservatives’ strategy appear more quixotic. Even if they did leverage the House into passing the infrastructure bill, Pelosi would still be able to preserve her two-track strategy.

“They may think they have Pelosi over a barrel, but they don’t,” congressional scholar Norman Ornstein told us.

Another way to look at this is that it gives Pelosi the option of passing the infrastructure bill in this fashion, then holding it, to give the conservative nine a way to say they “won.” They could say to their districts they got the infrastructure bill passed, and it’s only a matter of time until the money flows, yet it would not be sent to the president until moderates backed the reconciliation bill.

“This would seem to be a useful tool for Pelosi in negotiating with the conservative members of her caucus,” Josh Chafetz, the author of a good book about Congress, told us. “They can claim to have won the concession of passing the bipartisan bill first."

“It’s certainly a plausible pathway in procedural terms," Binder told us.

And yet, adding another complexity, this might not work for another reason. Progressives might not vote for the infrastructure bill as part of this strategy, because they won’t trust that it will work in the end.

The bottom line is that Pelosi might have to come up with some way of giving the conservative nine a face saving exit. If she did, and it got the conservatives to drop their hostage taking, they could then claim the Problem Solvers Caucus — which these conservatives belong to — actually solved a problem. Wouldn’t that be refreshing?

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