https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bernie-sanders-35-trillion-infrastructure-bill-lowered/story?id=80368168

In order for the bipartisan infrastructure bill and larger social spending package to pass, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Sunday the $3.5 trillion budget resolution price tag will likely be lowered.

“Three and a half trillion should be a minimum, but I accept that there’s gonna have to be give and take,” Sanders told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl.

House progressives have warned leadership they will not vote on President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill until the larger human infrastructure bill is also ready for a vote. The budget resolution calls for investments in climate change policy, child care and other social programs, and is wider in scope than the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which includes measures to improve the nation’s physical infrastructure.

“Both these bills are going forward in tandem,” Sanders said, reiterating the progressive call to hold out on passing infrastructure until the social spending bill is also passed.

Moderate Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have said they will not support the bill’s $3.5 trillion price tag. Due to the slim Democratic majority in the Senate, neither bill will pass unless they have all the votes of the Democrats.

Sinema released a statement Saturday accusing progressives of “an ineffective stunt” and slammed House Democratic leadership for failing to pass the bipartisan infrastructure deal.

“Denying Americans millions of good-paying jobs, safer roads, cleaner water, more reliable electricity and better broadband only hurts everyday families,” Sinema wrote.

Asked by Karl to respond to her statement, Sanders said he thinks Sinema is “wrong” and said both bills must go forward together, adding that he voted for the infrastructure bill.

“We’re not just taking on or dealing with Sen. Manchin and Sen. Sinema, we’re taking on the entire ruling class of the country,” Sanders responded. “Right now the drug companies, the health insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry are spending hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to prevent us from doing what the American people want.”

“This really is a test on whether democracy can work,” Sanders said. “I hope very much and I expect that the Democratic caucus and the president — I know he will — stand firm.”

Biden spent last week negotiating with members and visited Capitol Hill on Friday to meet with House Democrats. According to sources in the room for the meeting, the president suggested lowering the price tag for his social policy bill to a number ranging from $1.9 to $2.2 trillion to reach a compromise.

Sanders said he’s not sure it is “accurate” to say Biden would settle on a reconciliation package around $2 trillion.

“The president also said that a smaller investment could create historic achievements, but [for] you, $2 trillion is not enough?” Karl pressed.

“What the president is saying is that what we are trying to do is for the working families of this country, for the children, for the elderly, we’re trying to pass the most consequential piece of legislation since the Great Depression, and he’s right,” Sanders responded.

Manchin has said he will not vote to go over $2 trillion on the reconciliation bill. Asked how they can proceed without his vote, Sanders said the bill is paid for by increasing taxes on “the wealthiest people not paying federal taxes.”

“If Manchin wants to pay for it, I’m there, let’s do it, and by the way, you could pay for it at $3.5 trillion, you can pay for it at $6 trillion,” Sanders said. “We have massive income and wealth inequality in this country.”

Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has called the $3.5 trillion price tag too high. Pressed on whether the Democratic infighting will not only hurt Democrats in the midterms, but also hurt McAuliffe in his November race, Sanders said he “wishes Terry McAuliffe the best of luck” and emphasized the popularity of the reconciliation bill.

“What we are fighting for is precisely what the American people want,” Sanders said.

Sanders emphasized his confidence in passing both bills.

“At the end of the day, I am absolutely convinced we’re going to have a strong infrastructure bill, and we’re going to have a great consequential reconciliation bill which addresses the needs of the American people,” Sanders said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders tells @jonkarl that the $3.5 trillion budget resolution price tag will likely be lowered.

“The $3.5 trillion should be a minimum, but I accept that there's gonna have to be give and take.” https://t.co/5MGcXtm7a4 pic.twitter.com/efP8oRyu7m

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 3, 2021

Pressed by @jonkarl whether the Democratic infighting will hurt Democrats in the midterms, Sen. Bernie Sanders emphasizes the popularity of the reconciliation bill.

“What we are fighting for is precisely what the American people want.” https://t.co/oJzLmwd3jb pic.twitter.com/aRf9UShZ2L

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 3, 2021

https://newrepublic.com/article/163833/corporate-democrats-killing-bidens-agenda

Corporate Democrats Are Killing Biden’s Agenda
And in doing so, they’re threatening the party’s electoral future.

This dynamic should receive more media attention. Throughout the past few weeks, the Beltway press has focused on the intraparty tensions between a progressive coalition that’s made a lot of concessions but continues to support a bill that’s popular with the public and stands to do some material good and a more conservative faction of moderates who have been hostile to the Biden agenda. This conflict has been largely framed as a clash of competing philosophies: profligate spenders versus miserly austerians.

It’s well past time, of course, to end the practice of blindly lending legitimacy to the positions of deficit hawks. But that’s grist for another mill. What’s important to note here is that the moderates aren’t actually coming by their ideological imperatives in an honest manner. If the media wants to continue covering these internecine conflicts, they might do well to remember that only one side is acting out of principle. The other has been bought off.

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/joe-manchins-truly-brutal-ransom

First, let’s be clear about one thing: Joe Manchin does not care about West Virginia’s coal miners. He obviously possesses sufficient leverage in the ongoing Capitol Hill negotiations that, if he wanted to, he could insure that the state’s remaining 15,000 coal miners all got yachts like his. He could make sure that every coal community in the state had health clinics, libraries, swimming pools, vocational high schools, community college branches. Hell, at this point Joe Biden would happily consent to plumbing the Monangahela River so that it ran as whiskey three hours a day and Coca-Cola on weekends.

But Joe Manchin is actually doing the work of the fossil fuel industry, which has given him more money than any other person in Washington (no easy feat, considering the scale of their largesse). That became indisputably clear yesterday when Politico obtained the memo he’d given Majority Leader Schumer over the summer, stipulating his Scrooge-ish conditions for doing anything about the climate crisis and all the other crises besetting America.

With regard to energy, he made one basic demand, which follow the industry’s line to a T. And it only took five words: “Spending on innovation, not elimination.” In other words: it is permissible to spend money on solar panels, windmills and so on, as long as none of it is aimed at actually reducing the amount of oil and gas we pump. As he put it, all policy had to be “fuel neutral.” He said, explicitly, if you’re going to give tax credits for clean and energy, you have to continue the tax subsidies for fossil fuels. Any credits for electric cars must also go to hydrogen-powered cars—because using natural gas to create hydrogen is one of the industry’s Rube Goldberg schemes for holding on to its business model.

This is nothing more than the “all of the above” energy strategy of the Obama years, and given how much more we now know both about the economics of clean energy (incredibly cheap) and the dangers of rapid climate change (incredibly existential), it’s disgusting. The Biden administration was trying to break with that model and move toward the clean energy world that both physics and finance demand—but the fossil fuel industry won’t let it, and Manchin is their hostage-taker.

Whatever deal emerges today will be judged on one thing (and the judging will be done not just here, but in every other capitol around the world): whether or not it allows us to meet Biden’s target of cutting emissions in half by 2030. If Manchin gets his way, that won’t happen. Manchin came to power with an ad showing him shooting climate regulations—now he’s holding a gun to the planet’s head.

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/575068-sanders-not-my-understanding-that-biden-called-for-lower

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on Sunday that it is not his “understanding” that President Biden suggested lowering the price of a massive reconciliation spending bill during a closed-door meeting with House Democrats.

Appearing on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” Sanders was asked by host Chuck Todd if he had accepted that the reconciliation bill will likely be lower than the $3.5 trillion that Democrats had originally aimed to pass, as Biden is reported to have said to lawmakers.

“That is not my understanding of what he said,” Sanders replied. “What he said is there’s going to have to be give and take on both sides. I’m not clear that he did bring forth a specific number.”

“But what the president also said, and what all of us are saying, is that maybe the time is now for us to stand up to powerful special interests who are currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to prevent us from doing what the American people want,” he added.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has set an Oct. 31 deadline for voting on the infrastructure package after progressive Democrats and moderates were unable to come to a compromise on the two key pieces of legislation. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said last week that he would not vote on any reconciliation bill larger than $1.5 trillion, angering progressives.

Todd asked Sanders on Sunday what measures within the bill he preferred, noting that the $3.5 trillion amount had already been lowered from an initial $6 trillion. The NBC host asked if Sanders believed a certain number of items on the “wish list” should be prioritized or if he was aiming to pass as many as possible.

“Chuck, this is not a wish list. Climate change and cutting carbon emissions has everything to do with whether or not we leave this planet to future generations that is healthy and is habitable,” said Sanders.

“You have to have a skilled workforce. We can’t have a skilled workforce and do the good jobs that are out there unless we train young people. That’s why we want to make community colleges tuition-free. So this is not a wish list. This is what the working families of this country want and what the economy needs.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/575081-jayapal-15-trillion-reconciliation-bill-is-not-going-to-happen

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said on Sunday she was not willing to go as low as $1.5 trillion in negotiations for the Democratic-backed reconciliation bill that has stalled in Congress after that price tag was floated by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) last week.

When asked by CNN’s Dana Bash about support such a topline spending limit, Jayapal firmly rejected that figure.

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” she told Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “That’s too small to get our priorities in. So, it’s going to be somewhere between $1.5 and $3.5.”

Jayapal, however, would not specify what number she would agree to as a potential compromise.

“I don’t feel the need to give a number, because I gave my number. It was $3.5,” she said. “So, if you’re in a negotiation, you need to have a counteroffer before you bid against yourself.”

Jayapal added that her priority was focused on including “critical programs” in the bill rather than the price.

When asked if she was open to a potential $2.1 trillion budget floated by the Biden administration last week when it was clear House Democrats did not have the votes to pass infrastructure and reconciliation, Jayapal reiterated that money limits was not her priority.

“What we have said from the beginning is, it’s never been about the price tag,” she said. “It’s about what we want to deliver. The price tag comes out of that.”

"There's no number on the table yet that… everyone has agreed to," Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal tells @DanaBashCNN when asked about the ongoing negotiations on the larger spending package. Adding, $1.5 trillion is "too small to get our priorities in." #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/KV2EZ3Ig49

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) October 3, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/03/us/politics/progressive-democrats-infrastructure-abortion.html

Progressives on Sunday flatly rejected the latest demands from Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a key swing vote for Democrats, to shrink President Biden’s domestic policy agenda by more than half and to insert a provision to ensure that the federal government does not fund abortions.

Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington and the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that progressives would not agree to reduce Mr. Biden’s 10-year, $3.5 trillion social safety net and climate bill to $1.5 trillion, as Mr. Manchin requested.

“That’s not going to happen,” Ms. Jayapal said on “State of the Union” on CNN. “That’s too small to get our priorities in. It’s going to be somewhere between $1.5 and $3.5, and I think the White House is working on that right now. Remember: What we want to deliver is child care, paid leave, climate change.”

Mr. Manchin said in an interview with National Review last week that he was insisting that the legislation include the Hyde Amendment, which states that Medicaid will not pay for an abortion unless the woman’s life is in danger or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

The Hyde Amendment has been reauthorized every year since 1976, but Mr. Biden did not include it in his latest budget proposal. During the presidential race, his campaign initially said he supported the amendment, but he later reversed course and condemned it.

Ms. Jayapal, who was one of three members of Congress who testified last week about their personal experiences of having an abortion, said she opposed Mr. Manchin’s demand.

“The Hyde Amendment is something the majority of the country does not support,” she said.

However, Ms. Jayapal and other progressives said they were willing to compromise on the package’s price tag. Several said they were discussing whether to cut certain programs from their agenda entirely or to reduce the duration of the bill’s funding — to five years from 10 years, for example.

“We can front-load the benefits and have less years,” Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Ms. Jayapal said that progressives were willing to explore shortening the length of some components of the funding bill to decrease its cost, but that new clean energy standards needed to stay in the legislation for a decade.

“It takes time to cut carbon emissions,” she said.

Police escorted us out as staff mocked us for demanding that @senatorsinema follow through on her promises. She has zero respect for her constituents. pic.twitter.com/tP3NnpfLWA

— LUCHA Arizona (@LUCHA_AZ) October 3, 2021