A simple math experiment should help progressive Democrats understand the limits of their power to push controversial spending legislation through an unwilling Congress. Even if they had the votes to win approval of a $3.5 trillion spending bill in the House (which they do not), the math isn’t even remotely on their side in the Senate, where Democrats hold a razor-thin majority and two Democrats already have said they won’t back this bill. The progressives have been holding firm based on their conviction that good intentions and the purest of motives — helping poor people, single moms and pre-kindergarten kids, and substantively addressing climate change — would drive this bill to passage.
Their only leverage is the fate of a smaller, $1 trillion-plus infrastructure bill that has already cleared its biggest hurdle in the Senate with bipartisan support. The progressives threatened to vote down that bill in the House unless the spending bill comes up for a vote simultaneously. In other words, they’re holding a much-needed infrastructure package hostage, even if it hands an embarrassing defeat to President Joe Biden.
In one sense, they’re only recognizing the reality of hard-ball, arm-twisting politics that Republicans have been playing — and winning at — for decades. The only difference is that the progressives are playing this game against their own team.
