Playbook PM: Still waiting for Sinema

From: POLITICO Playbook - Wednesday Sep 29,2021 05:56 pm

Sep 29, 2021

By Ryan Lizza, Garrett Ross and Eli Okun

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SIREN — Democrats are discussing the possibility of President JOE BIDEN visiting the Hill on Thursday as Dems gear up for a consequential vote on the BIF, sources tell our colleagues Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris.

Merry BIF-mas Eve!

Thursday is the day the bipartisan infrastructure bill is scheduled for a vote in the House. To pass the House, progressives are demanding that the much larger reconciliation bill must be finished. To finish the reconciliation bill, Biden needs to cut a deal with Sen. KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-Ariz.). To get a deal with Sinema, she has previously said, the bipartisan infrastructure bill must pass the House on Thursday.

All paths to a solution to unstick the Biden agenda run through Sinema. She has built a kind of BIF-reconciliation mobius strip: She is both the person demanding that BIF pass the House without a delay, and the one person whose actions and statements will most determine whether that happens (the White House currently sees Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) as less of an obstacle, though that might be an overly optimistic read on things).

Let’s check in with the Democrats in charge of sorting this out:

— NANCY PELOSI , who Monday said BIF and reconciliation were de-linked, seemed to put them back together today: “I think that if we come to a place where we have agreement in legislative language, not just principle … then I think we will come together.” (POLITICO)

— Manchin, asked about Pelosi’s comment: “That won’t happen.” ( CNN)

— Rep. JOSH GOTTHEIMER (D-N.J.), in a Playbook Interview with Rachael this morning: “It’s going to happen tomorrow. In 24 hours, lots can happen. We’re going to get there. … We have no choice but to get this done, so we will.”

— Sinema , per a senior White House official (who told Playbook this is “what she keeps saying”): “I’m not there on $3.5 [trillion].”

— Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.), asked whether the $3.5 trillion topline number should be lower: “I think the number is lower, we started at $6 trillion, OK? And in fact, you can make the argument that $6 trillion is too low a number.”

— Biden: *sound of crickets chirping*

COUNTDOWN TO DEFAULT — Meanwhile, Pelosi notched a win on the debt ceiling, announcing that she had struck a deal with moderates to vote on raising the limit later today, clearing the way for the House to pass it on to the Senate. More from Sarah Ferris, Nicholas Wu and Heather Caygle

However, the fight is far from over: Senate Republicans are still planning to block the vote in their chamber, insisting that Dems address it in reconciliation. But Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER said today that it simply can’t be done.

— Schumer: The move would require “ping-ponging separate bills back from the Senate and the House. It’s uncharted waters. Individual senators could move to delay … It is very risky and could well lead us to default.”

— Per our colleague Burgess Everett: “Schumer has described to his caucus the process, several D senators say it will take 3-4 weeks. Rs could in theory just make it really easy for Democrats to revise budget and add debt limit bill, but that would require total unity among GOP to do.”

ON THE SHUTDOWN FRONT — “Congress primed to avert shutdown despite remaining conflicts,” by Caitlin Emma and Jennifer Scholtes: “The Senate appeared on track Wednesday to prevent a government shutdown in less than 36 hours, as Democrats and Republicans wade through last-minute impediments to a stopgap funding bill’s speedy passage. Despite lingering issues, the measure didn’t seem to be in immediate danger of tanking, with federal cash set to expire on Thursday at midnight.”

Good Wednesday afternoon.

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TRUMP CARDS

— A donor to former President DONALD TRUMP is accusing COREY LEWANDOWSKI, a former top Trump aide, of “making unwanted sexual advances toward her at a Las Vegas charity event over the weekend,” Alex Isenstadt reports.

“TRASHELLE ODOM, the wife of Idaho construction executive JOHN ODOM, alleges that Lewandowski repeatedly touched her, including on her leg and buttocks, and spoke to her in sexually graphic terms. Four people who were first-hand witnesses at the event corroborated Odom’s allegations. POLITICO also spoke with two people — one who was at the event and another who was not — who described conversations they had with Odom about the incidents immediately after they happened.”

CONGRESS

BUILDING BACK K STREET — Lobbyists may smell blood in the water with Dems’ massive spending bill as “drug companies, oil and gas firms, the tobacco corporations and other U.S. industries” ramp up their efforts to influence the final product, bolstered by the already fractured Democratic caucus, WSJ’s Brody Mullins and Ted Mann report . “If the lobbyists persuade just a small group of Democrats to oppose tax increases on a particular industry, they would in effect sabotage much of Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda.”

NAME BLAME GAME — The tension between progressives and moderates in the Democratic party is rising — so much so that some progressives want to ax the term “moderate” altogether, The Hill’s Hanna Trudo writes . “Referring to the small handful of conservative Democrats working to block the president’s agenda as ‘moderates’ does grave harm to the English language and unfairly maligns my colleagues who are actually moderate yet by and large understand the stakes of this historic moment,” Rep. MONDAIRE JONES (D-N.Y.) told The Hill.

SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN — Government agencies are already stretched thin after a year of the pandemic, and a government shutdown on Friday would only exacerbate the problem, writes WaPo’s Lisa Rein. “A shutdown would furlough hundreds of thousands of workers — potentially far more than during the record-setting but partial 35-day shutdown during the Trump administration in late 2018 and 2019. And some day-to-day services would be crippled at agencies already struggling to stay afloat.”

THE WHITE HOUSE

WHAT’S IN $3.5 TRILLION? — That’s the question that the White House has been trying to answer as it attempts to convey to the public exactly what it is that Congress is haggling over in its massive spending bill. But some within the party think the message isn’t getting across, with Biden having spent weeks focused on Afghanistan and a growing worry that the “pitch on the package doesn’t always click with people looking for a more concrete idea of what’s in it for them,” AP’s Jonathan Lemire, Zeke Miller and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar write.

INTRODUCING CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. GET A FIRST LOOK AT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.

THE PANDEMIC

DISINFORMATION DIGEST — YouTube announced today that it would ban any videos and users promoting anti-vaccine information and content of any kind. “YouTube specifically said that content will be banned if it falsely ties vaccinations to causing autism — a long-debunked claim reviled by the autistic community — as well as other conditions such as cancer or infertility,” Nick Niedzwiadek writes. The blog post

BOOSTER BOOM — Despite the CDC’s targeted guidance for who should be getting coronavirus booster shots right now, many Americans are jumping the line, while doctors and pharmacies are signing up patients without proof of eligibility, WSJ’s Robbie Whelan reports.

ALL POLITICS

DEEP IN THE HEART — MATTHEW DOWD, a former strategist for GEORGE W. BUSH’s campaign, is running for Texas lieutenant governor as a Democrat trying to unseat Republican DAN PATRICK, Texas Tribune’s James Barragán reports . “In an interview with The Texas Tribune, Dowd said he started seriously considering running for office after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump who were trying to stop the certification of last year’s presidential election.”

REDISTRICTING READ — The new congressional map in Colorado is good news for Republicans in a state that has become increasingly blue, Ally Mutnick and Allan James Vestal report . An independent panel approved a new breakdown that would see four Democratic-leaning seats, three where the GOP has an advantage and one competitive district — giving Republicans a decent shot of splitting the state.

GLASS CEILING WATCH — For all of the progress women have made across the country on the ballot in recent years, many states have yet to elect a woman as governor, Liz Crampton writes . In fact, only nine states have female governors — six Democrats and three Republicans — with four having entered office through succession. “Now there’s growing urgency among leaders in both major parties around bolstering the chances of women running in the 2022 gubernatorial elections, when voters in 36 states will pick their next state executive.”

POLICY CORNER

IN THE TANK — “JERRY TAYLOR, the co-founder and president of the Niskanen Center, recently resigned from the Washington, D.C.-based think tank after being charged with violently attacking his wife, according to court records obtained by POLITICO,” Daniel Lippman reports . “Taylor, who previously had been a longtime top official of the Cato Institute, was arrested in early June on a misdemeanor charge of assault and battery of a family member in Arlington, Va.”

MEET THE NEW BOSS — This isn’t your daddy’s FTC. Under new Chair LINA KHAN, the FTC has tightened up its reins and returned to “its original trustbusting mission and becoming markedly less friendly to the businesses it regulates,” Leah Nylen writes. “The shift has inspired cheers from her fellow progressives while unsettling many GOP lawmakers, the agency’s two Republican commissioners and even some longtime FTC employees.”

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JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH

THE NEW CHIEF SPEAKS — J. THOMAS MANGER, the new Capitol Police chief, sat down for an interview with AP’s Michael Balsamo and Colleen Long and painted a grim picture of the threats that his troops face. Manger said “his force is seeing a historically high number of threats against lawmakers, thousands more than just a few years ago. He predicts authorities will respond to close to 9,000 threats against members of Congress in 2021 — more than 4,100 had been reported from January to March.”

MOVE ALONG — The congressional panel investigating the events of Jan. 6 knows it could be in for a slog as witnesses attempt to dodge providing testimony. That’s why the committee’s leaders are “preparing a narrow set of legal and tactical options” to compel witnesses to testify and prevent legal scuffles from veering the investigation off track, Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu report.

SPEAKING OF … Rep. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-Ga.) “publicly posted an email sent by an investigator with the House's Jan. 6 committee indicating the panel's intent to subpoena one of her associates,” Kyle and Anthony Adragna report for Congress Minutes.

BEYOND THE BELTWAY

CULTURE WARS LATEST — As critical race theory takes hold as one of the latest entries on the culture war battlefield, one prominent conservative political group is staying out of the fight. “Leaders in the network built by the billionaire Koch family say they oppose government bans over teaching about race and history in schools,” AP’s Thomas Beaumont writes in Des Moines . “While they note they don’t agree with the ideas at the center of the fight, they argue the government bans, now enacted in 11 states, stifle debate essential to democracy.”

CLIMATE FILES — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this morning declared 23 species extinct, a rare move that government scientists warn could become more common amid a growing climate crisis that exacerbates conditions for endangered plants and animals, per WaPo’s Dino Grandoni . “A million plants and animals are in danger of disappearing, many within decades. The newly extinct species are the casualties of climate change and habitat destruction, dying out sooner than any new protections can save them.”

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

HAPPENING TODAY — U.S. and European Union officials are gathering in Pittsburgh today for the first meeting of the EU-U.S. Trade and Tech Council, a trans-Atlantic effort aimed at tackling joint challenges to maintain the West’s influence in technology and trade, Steven Overly and Mark Scott write. But “diplomatic skirmishes and industrial fault lines between the trading partners” could upset the apple cart, as officials try to hit the reset button.

MEDIAWATCH

MORE OZY FALLOUT — KATTY KAY, a prominent journalist who had left the BBC to join Ozy Media, said on Twitter that she had resigned from the company in light of the recent NYT report questioning its business practices. More from NYT’s Katie Robertson

PLAYBOOKERS

SPOTTED at a small cocktail reception for the Women in Government Relations’ Executive Leadership Forum hosted by Gloria Dittus at her home on Tuesday: Ecuadorian Ambassador Ivonne A-Baki, Albanian Ambassador Floreta Faber, Emily Duncan, Heather Kennedy and Sharon McBride.

SPOTTED at the 2021 Wilson Awards at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium: Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Reps. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) and Karen Bass (D-Calif.), David Malpass, Stephane Bancel, Alex Gorsky, Bill Haslam and Mark Green.

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