Comments on: Infrastructure Week http://www.chrisweigant.com/2021/07/19/infrastructure-week/ Reality-based political commentary Sun, 10 May 2026 13:21:36 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: John M from Ct. http://www.chrisweigant.com/2021/07/19/infrastructure-week/#comment-179148 John M from Ct. Tue, 20 Jul 2021 00:32:08 +0000 http://www.chrisweigant.com/?p=20742#comment-179148 Nice thought about Sanders being prepared to turn on a dime on Wednesday, and bring a larger reconciliation bill to a procedural vote if the so-called bipartisan bill goes down in flames. I had had a similar instinct, that if the bp bill blows up the Dems need to transfer its contents to the only other game in town, pronto. But is that the way Sanders and his committee works? Wouldn't we know, via staff leaks, if his people were preparing two parallel procedural votes, for plan A and plan A+B? Is it even all that easy to do such a thing, Senate rules-wise? And finally, I remember reading that this 'procedural vote' on Wednesday, on the larger or super-larger spending plan meant to qualify for a reconciliation vote later in the year, is a can of worms in its own right. If I understand it, the bill is simply not ready. There are no details, no actual legislative budgetary assignments and directives -- $45 billion for this, $200 billion for that, a trillion for you guys over there. That comes later. So some senators are complaining that the procedural vote, which as you say is simply the beginning that "gets the legislative ball rolling", is meaningless or even deceptive. The passage of either one, the as-is one or the possible one that Bernie has secretly prepared in the case of the failure of the bipartisan mini-bill, is not at all guaranteed because it's too big, with too little detail for its size and historic scope. Anyway, I guess at least *something* will happen this week: the life or death of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that apparently, with two days to go, has no realistic funding attached to its allocations. Nice thought about Sanders being prepared to turn on a dime on Wednesday, and bring a larger reconciliation bill to a procedural vote if the so-called bipartisan bill goes down in flames. I had had a similar instinct, that if the bp bill blows up the Dems need to transfer its contents to the only other game in town, pronto.

But is that the way Sanders and his committee works? Wouldn't we know, via staff leaks, if his people were preparing two parallel procedural votes, for plan A and plan A+B? Is it even all that easy to do such a thing, Senate rules-wise?

And finally, I remember reading that this 'procedural vote' on Wednesday, on the larger or super-larger spending plan meant to qualify for a reconciliation vote later in the year, is a can of worms in its own right. If I understand it, the bill is simply not ready. There are no details, no actual legislative budgetary assignments and directives -- $45 billion for this, $200 billion for that, a trillion for you guys over there. That comes later.

So some senators are complaining that the procedural vote, which as you say is simply the beginning that "gets the legislative ball rolling", is meaningless or even deceptive. The passage of either one, the as-is one or the possible one that Bernie has secretly prepared in the case of the failure of the bipartisan mini-bill, is not at all guaranteed because it's too big, with too little detail for its size and historic scope.

Anyway, I guess at least *something* will happen this week: the life or death of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that apparently, with two days to go, has no realistic funding attached to its allocations.

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