Tuesday News & Notes
SEPTEMBER 28, 2021 -- CASTRO ANNOUNCES CUBANS ARE FREE TO LEAVE THE ISLAND, 1965
•Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, told her caucus Monday night – progressives be damned -- she will not make a House of Representatives vote on the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill contingent on a vote on the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, Politico says, even if the latter is simply a vote to advance its framework. Pelosi yesterday moved the deadline to vote on infrastructure – the only ‘sure thing’ in President Biden’s agenda so far – from Monday to Thursday.
Pelosi v. The Squad – Pelosi doesn’t have the votes without the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which will tank the infrastructure bill Thursday without the reconciliation bill, says caucus chairwoman, Rep. Pramila Jaypal, D-WA (per Politico). Speaking after Monday’s Democratic caucus meeting, Jaypal said, “we are going to vote for both bills after the reconciliation bill is done.”
•••
Well, This Was Quite Predictable – Democrats “may drop [the] debt fight” so they can pass funding of the federal government past this Thursday, Politico says, following Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s, R-KY, blockage of a House-passed bill that coupled the two together. No Senate Republicans voted for cloture when a bill to extend short-term funding to December 3, while it would also have raised the debt limit through December 2022.
Yes, that’s right, Senate Democrats had hoped to get at least 10 Republicans on board to raise the debt limit through next year’s midterms. McConnell, who has been blocking Democratic legislation since the beginning of the Obama administration, was having none of it. To be fair, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, was perfectly aware Monday that the bill would go nowhere.
Seems like a busy time to make a point, what with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, having moved back the promised vote on the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill from Monday to Thursday, with attention in the two days in between diverted to the Senate and House armed services committees and our disastrous military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Note: Former U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards, D-MD, argues in a recent Washington Post column that the vote against cloture gives Democratic senators the excuse they need to kill the legislative filibuster. Democrats might have the bare minimum of a majority in both chambers; progressives do not.
Edwards writes that the “deadbeat Republican party” is “unwilling to pay the bills and ready to turn off the lights in America.” Yes, they are, Ms. Edwards. And whatever happens, Democrats will take the blame.
Eighteen-day Margin? – Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin Tuesday offered in a letter to Congress a quite specific date for when the federal government will default on its debt (per The Hill). “We now estimate that Treasury is likely to exhaust its extraordinary measures if Congress has not acted to raise or suspend the debt limit by October 18,” Yellin wrote. “At that point, we expect Treasury would be left with very limited resources that would be depleted quickly.”
•••
WSJ Scoop Says Putin Offered U.S. Central Asian Military Bases – Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussed with his Russian counterpart an offer by President Vladimir Putin to use Russia’s military bases in Central Asia to respond to terrorist threats from Afghanistan, The Wall Street Journal reported in a scoop late Monday. Milley discussed the offer at a meeting in Helsinki last Wednesday with Russia’s Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov at the request of President Biden’s National Security Staff, the newspaper reports.
The Senate Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing Tuesday with Milley, Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin and Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who leads the U.S. Central Command. They are scheduled to testify before the before the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday. All will testify about the United States’ chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Milley also will answer questions about phone calls during the late days of the Trump administration to a Chinese counterpart that the U.S. was not going to attack his country.
Note: It says something about the desperation of the Biden administration following the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that the president would now be ready to trust a government known to have meddled in our last two presidential elections (at least) with hosting our military intelligence in its Central Asian military bases.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods