On the recent development/s with the Blue Dog Coalition:
Firstly, Fox News has
picked up on the letter signed by five Blue Dog Coalition members and addressed to Pelosi. The signatories (because their names have been buried somewhere in the last 15 pages) are Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Stephanie Murphy (D-Florida), Kurt Schrader (D-Oregon), and Ed Case (D-Hawaii).
For context, the
Blue Dog Coalition is a caucus of 19 Democratic Representatives who identify as centrist or conservative. They are led by three co-chairs, two of whom (Murphy and Case) signed this letter. Schrader also leads its Blue Dog PAC, so while this letter does not include even a majority of the caucus's members, it suggests that the caucus - or most of their leaders, at least - are fully behind this letter and the underlying intent.
The letter itself was calling for Pelosi to do a few things for them. The first was to give the five signatories 72 hours to read the reconciliation/BBB bill and "the proper CBO/JCT scoring information". The second was that they wanted a guarantee the Senate wouldn't edit the bill after it gets passed in the House. The third is that they wanted the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to go through the entire bill and score it before they vote to pass it.
Here's the problems with each:
- 72 hours isn't much time, admittedly, but it is still a delay of three days. Three days also isn't much time to review a bill that's over 2,000 pages long and still stuffed to the brim with pork, so I can only assume this is a minor delaying action.
- This guarantee isn't gonna happen. The Democrats in the Senate want to make significant changes to what will be in BBB, and that's even before it gets to Manchin.
- This is the real non-starter. The thing that kills any chance of this happening. "Leadership" - including Pelosi - believes the CBO won't be able to give the bill a score UNTIL THANKSGIVING. And after the score comes out they could perhaps demand that the bill gets cut down, because the 3,500,000,000,000 = 0 math that Biden and Psaki both believe in is bullshit. This single-handedly pushes BBB leaving the House back to late November at the very earliest.
Now, the centrists in the House are of course relatively new to this obstruction game. The progressives there have been playing it for a while longer. So unsurprisingly, there is some disunity and Josh Gottheimer has switched sides. After a provision about state/local tax deductions was amended, he gave his support. As this drags on though I can imagine they'll solidify their opposition. But this is not the full extent of the drama involving the Blue Dog Coalition!
Yesterday Pelosi spent more than an hour meeting with Reps. Luis Correa (D-California), Adriano Espaillat (D-New York) and Chuy Garcia (D-Illinois). Correa is the only BDC member out of the three but they have a common objective: getting immigration
pork provisions inserted into BBB. They seem to be wishy washy on this because while they're hoping to get it included, they also seem willing to vote in favor even if it's not. So there does seem to be some weakness still at this early stage.
TL;DR fuckery is afoot and DINOs seem ready to make some moves.