It’s a crucial week for Biden’s agenda and Congress

The government is set to run out of money at the end of September unless Congress comes together to pass a funding bill, currently tied to suspending the country’s debt limit by Democrats. If that doesn’t happen, a government shutdown will begin at 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 1.

As with all government shutdowns, certain government functions will come to a halt, while others will continue with employees not getting paid for a period of time. But a shutdown now has the added weight of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

If the government does shutdown, here are how the health agencies tasked with combatting the pandemic will move forward:

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

US Food and Drug Administration

All federal agencies would by impacted by a shutdown. Here are some other agencies plans for a lapse in government funding:

Department of Defense

Department of Homeland Security

National Park Service

Treasury Department

Small Business Administration

Housing and Urban Development

Smithsonian 

The House is now beginning debate on the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

The debate on the floor will take place over coming days. The actual vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill is not scheduled to happen until at least Thursday.

By starting debate tonight, Democratic leadership can say they are beginning consideration of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which reflects the rule that was initially agreed to, even though they pushed back the actual vote to give everyone more time to try and hash out a deal. 

Rep. Josh Gottheimer emerged from negotiations in the Democratic caucus this evening, saying he believed most Democrats would vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill on Thursday.

The New Jersey Democrat went on to say it would be disrespectful to President Biden and the country to do otherwise.

Speaking on CNN, Gottheimer said he also supports a second spending package, which Democrats hope to pass through reconciliation, but he suggested Democratic lawmakers should see the two bills as separate matters when they vote.

“You can’t go in there and vote against [it],” he said of the infrastructure package. “I just don’t see people going in there and voting against men and women of labor and 2 million jobs a year, and infrastructure. I just don’t see that.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer harshly criticized Senate Republicans for blocking a House-passed bill to suspend the debt limit and avert a shutdown and he vowed that there will be further action taken this week, but did not outline a specific plan. 

“Despite Republican intransigence this matter cannot be set aside for even a moment. Before the vote I changed my vote from yes to no in order to reserve the option of additional action on the House-passed legislation. Keeping the government open and preventing a default is vital to our country’s future and we’ll be taking further action to prevent this from happening this week,” he said.

Schumer blasted his Republicans colleagues for voting against the measure.

“It’s one of the most reckless, one of the most irresponsible votes I have seen taken place in the Senate,” he said in floor remarks.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana, said he voted against advancing a stopgap bill the House approved last week, which includes disaster relief for his state, because it was clear it wouldn’t pass.

“If it had any chance of passing, I would have voted yes because I need to bring relief to my state,” Cassidy said. 

He blasted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for attaching disaster relief to a bill that “wasn’t going to pass.”

“It was pretty cynical of Senator Schumer to attach relief for disaster victims to something that he knew wasn’t going to pass… leveraging their pain for something that you can do quite easily,” he said. “So shall I say I’m frustrated, absolutely.”

Senate Republicans blocked a House-passed bill to suspend the debt limit and avert a government shutdown from advancing in the Senate on Monday.

The move comes after Republicans had insisted that Democrats act alone to address the debt limit and leaves Congress without a clear plan to keep the government open with the threat of a potential shutdown looming by the end of the week.

Government funding is set to expire on Sept. 30, and the stopgap bill the House approved last week would extend funding and keep the government open through Dec. 3. In addition, the measure includes a debt limit suspension through Dec. 16, 2022. The clock is ticking to address the debt limit and Congress may only have until mid-October to act before the federal government can no longer pay its bills.

The Senate voted on a procedural motion to advance the legislation, which needed 60 votes to succeed. Since Democrats control only 50 seats in the chamber, they would have needed 10 Senate Republicans to vote in favor.

With the measure failing to advance in the Senate, congressional Democratic leaders will now have to scramble to determine a plan B. As of now, Congress does not yet have a plan announced by Democratic leadership in both chambers about how they will keep the government operating perilously close to the date when funding will run dry and a shutdown could be triggered.

Read more here.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi made clear to members at a closed-door caucus meeting there was no agreement yet on a price tag for their party’s bill to expand the social safety net, according to a person in the room.

She said that President Biden is negotiating that number still with senators and others.

She also didn’t detail a timeframe for taking up the larger bill but indicated there were more steps needed to ensure the measure passes muster with the Senate’s parliamentarian and adheres to strict budget rules in the chamber, the source said.

The Senate is now taking a procedural vote on whether to advance a House-passed bill to suspend the nation’s debt limit and avert a government shutdown. 

Senate Republicans have insisted that Democrats should act alone to address the debt limit and are expected to block the measure. The Hill team will alert when the vote is final.  

Government funding is set to expire on Sept. 30, and the stopgap bill the House approved last week would extend funding and keep the government open through Dec. 3. In addition, the measure includes a debt limit suspension through Dec. 16, 2022. The clock is ticking to address the debt limit and Congress may only have until mid-October to act before the federal government can no longer pay its bills.

The Senate is voting on a procedural motion to advance the legislation, which needs 60 votes to succeed. While a few Senate Republicans may ultimately vote in support of the legislation, it is not expected there will be 10 Senate Republican votes in favor, which would be needed to reach the 60-vote threshold since Democrats only control 50 seats in the chamber.

If the measure fails to advance in the Senate, as anticipated due to GOP opposition, it will leave Congress without a plan announced by Democratic leadership in both chambers about how they will keep the government operating perilously close to the date when funding will run dry and a shutdown could be triggered.

Prior to the Senate vote happening now, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell attempted to bring up a clean stop-gap bill to keep the government open that would not include the debt limit provision as an alternative. Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Patrick Leahy objected to an unanimous consent request to advance that proposal.  

Sen. Joe Manchin continued to be evasive about the dollar amount he could support for a budget package as he arrived at the Capitol late Monday for a Democratic leadership meeting in the office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. 

“No,” he said loudly to a reporter who asked if he had decided on a top line figure. “I’m not answering you, okay?”

When another reporter asked if the West Virginia Democrat had informed the White House of that dollar amount, Manchin was incredulous, “Jesus Christ, I just hollered at him” before explaining “I’m looking at the needs the country has.”

He was asked also if he would support a carbon tax that Democrats are considering as a way to off set the costs of the bill.

“I just heard about that. I’m not down that road yet. I’m talking. I’m interested in hearing what everyone has to say about everything,” Manchin said while adding that no one specifically pitched him on the carbon tax.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told reporters today that Democrats remain in “deep negotiation” over the party’s plan to expand the social safety net and seemed to acknowledged that high hurdles remain in the sprint to reach consensus among their ranks on spending legislation by Thursday.

“There was a signal sent out at the end of this weekend they were still in deep negotiation,” said Durbin, when asked if he believed progressives and moderates might reach an accord by Thursday.

“I don’t think anybody has a rosy scenario,” added the Senate’s second ranking Democrat.

Durbin said he is not certain where Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a moderate, stands in her demands to the leadership and the White House over the bill.

“No, I don’t know,” he said when asked by reporters about Sinema. “I have not sat down with her since some early conversations when she said $3.5 [trillion package] was not acceptable.”

Durbin said Democrats were planning to make another argument to the Senate parliamentarian to include immigration provisions in the party’s social safety net package.

Such a move would require the legislation to meet the Senate’s strict budget rules since Democrats are trying to include them in a reconciliation process that cannot be filibustered in the upper chamber.

Moderate Democratic Reps. Carolyn Bourdeaux, Ed Case, Jim Costa, Henry Cuellar, Jared Golden, Vicente Gonzalez, Josh Gottheimer, Kurt Schrader, and Filemon Vela released a statement ahead of the House beginning debate on the bipartisan infrastructure bill tonight.

They say that they expect a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill “no later than Thursday,” which is in line with what Speaker Pelosi has announced in terms of vote timing.

Many of these members were in the original group who negotiated with Democratic leadership to get the Sept. 27 date set as the original vote date for the bill.

Pelosi has since pushed that date back to try and buy more time to get progressives on board who have said they won’t vote for this bill without a vote on the broader economic spending package.  

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Republicans ahead of a key procedural vote Monday on a House-passed bill to suspend the nation’s debt limit and avert a government shutdown.

He warned that “If Republicans follow through with their plans to vote no, they will be on record deliberately sabotaging our country’s ability to pay the bills, and likely causing the first ever default in American history.” 

The best case scenario under this “awful situation,” Schumer said in floor remarks, is “our country would fall into another recession, potentially erasing all the progress we’ve made to pull ourselves out of the Covid crisis.”

Schumer asked his Republican colleagues to “think carefully about the practical consequences of what they’re doing” before voting down the measure.

What is happening tonight: The Senate will be voting on a procedural motion to advance the legislation, which needs 60 votes to succeed. While a few Senate Republicans may ultimately vote in support of the legislation, it is not expected there will be 10 Senate Republican votes in favor, which would be needed to reach the 60-vote threshold since Democrats only control 50 seats in the chamber.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made clear for months that Republicans will not vote to increase the federal borrowing limit, setting the stage for a major showdown over the issue. McConnell’s threat has prompted outrage from Democrats, who have said the GOP leader is playing a dangerous game that could tank the US economy. Republicans argue that it’s not uncommon for the majority party to shoulder the burden for increasing the debt limit, a politically toxic vote for lawmakers up for reelection.

McConnell said on Monday ahead of the vote that Republicans are ready to support a bill to avert a shutdown as long as it does not have the debt limit attached.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell doubled down on his stance over the debt limit, saying that Republicans will support a clean stop-gap funding bill to avert a shutdown, but “we will not provide Republican votes for raising the debt limit.”

The comments come ahead of a planned procedural vote later this evening in the Senate on a House-passed bill to avert a shutdown and suspend the debt limit that Republicans are expected to block.

McConnell also said that he will ask for unanimous consent for the Senate to pass a clean stop-gap bill later today as an alternative to the House-passed bill.  

“Let me make it abundantly clear one more time: We will support a clean continuing resolution that will prevent a government shutdown, get disaster relief to Louisiana, help properly vetted Afghan refugees who put themselves on the line for America, and support the Iron Dome assistance for our ally, Israel. We will not provide Republican votes for raising the debt limit,” McConnell added. 

The Senate is slated to take a procedural vote Monday at 5:30 p.m. ET on a House-passed bill to suspend the nation’s debt limit and avert a government shutdown, but Senate Republicans have insisted that Democrats should act alone to address the debt limit and are expected to block the measure.

Government funding is set to expire on Thursday, but the stopgap bill the House approved last week would extend funding and keep the government open through Dec. 3.

In addition, the measure includes a debt limit suspension through Dec. 16, 2022. The clock is ticking to address the debt limit and Congress may only have until mid-October to act before the federal government can no longer pay its bills.

What may happen next: If the measure fails to advance in the Senate, as anticipated due to GOP opposition, it will leave Congress without a plan announced by Democratic leadership in both chambers about how they will keep the government operating perilously close to the date when funding will run dry and a shutdown could be triggered.

It’s possible Democrats could move to strip out the debt limit suspension from the funding bill and attempt to pass a clean stop-gap spending measure quickly through both chambers ahead of the deadline, which Senate Republicans have said they would support, but it’s not yet clear what will happen.

Democrats do have options to raise the debt limit on their own to prevent the US from defaulting on its debts, but they argue that the vote should be a bipartisan shared responsibility.

Read more about today’s vote here.

Rep. Debbie Dingell speaks during a news conference outside the US Capitol on August 23.

Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, said she was frustrated that rank-and-file House Democrats have been excluded from negotiations, saying on MSNBC, “More of the House members need to be spoken to, period.”

She noted that aside from members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Problems Solvers Caucus, many Democrats don’t know where negotiations stand. Dingell was visibly frustrated that discussions were playing out so publicly and that the party was not coming together. 

She said she agrees with Sen. Dick Durbin that it would be helpful if President Biden addressed the caucus, but she did not think that would happen.

Dingell was hopeful the 5:30 p.m. ET meeting would provide some clarity and inform members where negotiations stand. 

She doubled down on her earlier comment that this would be a legislative week from hell, but emphasized that failure was not an option and that both bills would get done, saying, “It is either mutual distraction or we are going to do what’s right for the country in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a difference in so many people’s lives,”

Dingell said there isn’t an option not to fund the government. She said to do so in the middle of a pandemic would be a “shame on all of us. It would be inexcusable, irresponsible and it simple cannot happen,” Dingell said, adding that it’s everyone’s problem, not just Democrats.

The full Democratic House Caucus meets tonight at 5:30 p.m. ET behind closed doors. 

Read more about House Democrats’ negotiations here.

Sen. Joe Manchin leaves the US Capitol on September 22.

Sen. Joe Manchin, a key moderate Democrat, told CNN on Monday that getting a deal on Democrats’ massive social safety net bill by Thursday would, “be a heavy lift.”

Thursday is when House and Senate Democratic leaders want to have a deal on an outline of an agreement on their party’s larger package, in order to get House progressives to vote for the infrastructure bill.

Asked if leadership was rushing this process, Manchin reiterated that he thinks negotiations on the $3.5 trillion proposal will continue for some time.

“I’m not in control of the leadership,” he said. “They’re going to set the timetable, you know, there’s a lot in that bill, the 3.5 reconciliation bill: tax codes, climate change, social reforms, there’s a lot, and people need to know what’s in it, so it’s gonna take a while.” 

Manchin also said that he has spoken with President Biden since their meeting last week, noting, “we speak a lot.”

Ahead of several key and defining votes in Congress this week, President Biden told reporters that he is optimistic a deal on the spending bill will “go well.”

Asked what’s at stake for his presidency and his agenda, the President said “victory is at stake.”

The President said while he hopes a deal can be reached by the end of the week, that is not certain.

“Well, it may not be by the end of the week. I hope it’s by the end of the week but as long as we’re still alive we’ve got three things to do. The debt ceiling, continuing resolution and the two pieces of legislation. We do that, the country is going to be in great shape,” Biden said of the timing of how things may unfold on the Hill this week.

CNN’s Jason Hoffman contributed reporting to this post.

Democrats are exploring adding a carbon tax to their massive $3.5 trillion budget bill as a way to offset some of the bill’s cost. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden told CNN that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asked him to look at carbon pricing, and that discussions are ongoing.  

“We’ve got a lot of senators who care deeply about it,” Wyden said. “We’ve been having those discussions.” 

Wyden added he sees a carbon tax as complimentary to the array of clean energy tax credits his committee is also drafting, which would reward companies who reduce carbon emissions and save energy. 

A carbon tax would be a way to reduce fossil fuel emissions and pay for other measures in the bill. The government would set a price for carbon emissions, and emitters would pay that price for each ton of carbon emitted. 

It has long been favored by some Senate Democrats as an efficient and simple way to curb fossil fuel emissions, but the Biden administration has been hesitant to back it. A White House spokesperson didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the latest effort.  

Wyden told CNN he’s looking at structuring a carbon price in a way that will be fair to middle class families, who he said might be concerned about how it could impact them. He’s looking at ways to redistribute some of the revenue back to taxpayers through cash payments.  

The New York Times first reported that Democrats were exploring the tax.  

Where some moderates stand on this: What’s still unclear is whether two key Senate Democratic moderates – Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia – would support the measure. Sinema recently told the Arizona Republic that she supports tackling climate change, but opposes Democrats’ plans to increase the corporate and income tax rates. Manchin, who represents a coal state, is has said he doesn’t want to speed up the transition away from coal.  

“The transition’s already happening,” Manchin told CNN. “So I’m not going to sit back and let anyone accelerate whatever the market’s changes are doing. Coal is the most reliable we have.”  

Wyden said he’s involved in “collegial” climate negotiations with Manchin, but declined to say whether the West Virginia senator supports his clean energy tax credits.  

“He and I talk all the time,” Wyden told CNN, adding, “I’m not going to get into our private conversations.” 

Government funding expires at midnight Thursday, which could trigger a partial shutdown. 

Like hurricanes and wildfires in a time of climate change, America’s cyclical government shutdown seasons are becoming more frequent and severe.

Lawmakers and the White House used to come to a head over government spending every 10 years or so. Now it’s every three or so.

The House website has a list of every government funding lapse. We wrote stories just like this about the 2013 and 2018 editions of this fiasco.

What’s new in recent years? There’s a distressing new willingness to add the threat of defaulting on the national debt into the equation.

CNN’s Phil Mattingly reports that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to argue Republicans should at least allow a vote on the debt ceiling.

“The private call served to underscore a public reality: Washington is careening towards a debt ceiling debacle that would be catastrophic for Wall Street and Main Street alike,” Mattingly wrote.

Bottom line. The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that when Republicans controlled the entire government some Democrats helped them vote to keep the government open and raise the debt limit. Republicans feel no such duty.

That’s either a remarkable show of strength in party unity or an indictment of a wholly tribal view of government, depending on your perspective. But the winner-take-all outlook is apparent in everything from the GOP’s ability to push through Supreme Court justices to the concerted effort by many Republicans to overturn the election results. There is no American team spirit. There is only red and blue.

President Biden’s schedule on Monday — and throughout the week — is mostly wide open. That’s intentional.

White House meetings with lawmakers are possible. Calls are a certainty. A trip to Capitol Hill may even be in the cards, officials say.

At this point, things are moving hour-to-hour, according to officials. While nothing is locked in or firm, nothing is really off the table, either.

In other words, Biden is basically set to do whatever is needed to move things forward throughout the course of the week.

The White House is circulating a memo today spelling out what they say are the political advantages of passing both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the larger “Build Back Better” social and environmental spending act.

In it, the White House says the “evidence is overwhelming that the wind is at our backs and the public is eager for both of these packages to become law,” citing public polling showing the popularity of items contained with the bills, including paid leave, universal pre-K and expanding Medicare.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, left, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer arrive for a press conference on September 23.

House and Senate Democratic leaders are trying to reach a “framework” deal on their party’s larger economic package by Thursday — in order to woo progressive Democrats to fall in line behind the $1.2 trillion infrastructure package headed for a final House vote that day, according to a source involved in the talks.

Whether the framework is enough to win over progressives who have demanded passage of the economic package by then remains to be seen. And whether they can win over moderate Democrats — including Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — by Thursday on an outline of a deal is also highly uncertain.

In the meantime, Democrats and the White House plan to toughen their message to on-the-fence members, delivering this message of sorts: “You’re either with the President, or you’re not,” according to the source.

Before the evening caucus meeting tonight, the Congressional Progressive Caucus plans to hold a call at 12:30 p.m. ET to discuss their strategy, the source said.

Construction takes place on Interstate 285 in Sandy Springs, Georgia, on July 14.

The Senate passed a massive $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill in August and now the House is scheduled to vote on it later this week. If passed, the bill will go to President Biden’s desk to be signed into law.

But House progressives don’t want to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure legislation before also voting to pass a separate $3.5 trillion spending bill that would remake a lot of the country’s social safety net system — and also likely raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

Here’s what the infrastructure bill would fund:

Read more about what’s in the bill here.

A senior Biden administration official is expressing cautious optimism on prospects for advancing the reconciliation bill as well as an infrastructure bill this week: “we will have to cut a lot and drop some things, but I think we can get the big pieces.”

A second senior official says, “the dam is breaking.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday night that the House will vote Thursday on the $1 trillion infrastructure plan, as the future of President Biden’s sweeping economic agenda remains uncertain.

The vote is set to come as Pelosi works to unite disparate wings of the Democratic Party on both the infrastructure bill and broader $3.5 trillion social and environmental package, all as Congress works to stave off a lapse in government funding by Thursday and hitting the debt limit in October.

Pelosi, along with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and senior White House officials, spent the weekend working to broker an agreement on the social and environmental package.

Where things stand now: So far they have been unable to strike a deal between progressive and moderate Democrats on a topline figure for the social and environmental bill or a framework of programs contained in the plan. Pelosi had committed last month to the original Monday deadline for the infrastructure bill, hoping to placate moderates who were wavering in support for the larger budget blueprint.

President Biden enters the most seismic week of his legislative agenda explicitly set to miss one deadline and implicitly knowing he’ll soon have to bow to a Republican blockade on another.

Feverish talks over the course of the weekend led to a rhetorical intraparty pressure release, but still left Democrats miles away from a clear pathway forward on their sweeping $4 trillion dual-pronged agenda, according to multiple people directly involved.

Every piece of Biden’s agenda is on the line this week.

The vote on his $1.2 trillion Senate-passed infrastructure bill is now expected to happen on Thursday. The policy gaps in Democrats’ multi-trillion dollar social safety net are significant, even as Democratic leaders say they plan to bring it to the floor this week for consideration.

And Republicans are determined to block Democrats’ efforts to have them help raise the debt ceiling Monday night.

It’s a mess, but those three items — despite self-imposed deadlines, promises from leaders and the wishes of various wings of the Democratic party — don’t have to be dealt with this week.

The government funding bill does. And, if we get to the end of the week without a resolution on that one issue, the federal government shuts down.

Biden, upon returning from Camp David, hit at the same point as House Democrats — this is going to take some time.

Biden was on the phone with lawmakers throughout the weekend and his lead legislative negotiators Steve Ricchetti, Louisa Terrell and National Economic Council Director Brian Deese have been more or less working straight through the last several days and nights, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Overall, White House officials have been anxious about the path forward even though there remains, in the words of one official, “pretty explicit trust that history shows if the speaker is involved, it’s going to go our way.”

Yet nobody has a clear sense of the exact path forward on the pair of bills that make up not just Biden’s domestic agenda but also the central tenet of his presidency: that showing government can work will serve as the key to calming the rancorous anti-Washington fervor sweeping the country.

Those are the real stakes here for Biden. It’s not a whip count, or a specific policy dispute. He’s made clear, repeatedly, it’s so much bigger than that in his view. In playing the expectations game for these bills, Biden hasn’t hedged. And now it’s all on the line.

Read more about where things stand here.

Sun illuminates the US Capitol on September 25.

The Senate votes today at 5:30 p.m. ET on legislation to fund the government through December 3. The same bill raises the debt ceiling, something Republicans have said en masse they won’t support.

The bill is going down (with just a handful of Republican senators who may cross the aisle). But, it’s what happens in the hours and days after that will matter.

Democrats will have three days to fund the government. There is no public Plan B at the moment, but multiple people with direct knowledge say the expectation is the debt ceiling suspension will be ditched and a shorter funding bill will likely move.

That shorter-term option could run through early December or be a matter of weeks. Aides have said those considerations are all on the table.

House Democrats will have a caucus-wide meeting today at 5:30 p.m. ET. Think of it as a family reunion, an airing of grievances, an opportunity to get every single member on the same page at the same time in the same room.

For weeks, moderates and progressives have been lobbing arrows at one another, dancing around each other and this is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to get everyone in the room to talk it out, to remind them what is at stake before either side draws any more red lines.

Later this week: At this point, the earliest we will see a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill is Thursday. The $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill will head to the floor Monday, but there is a long way to go to convince progressives to vote “yes.”

Pelosi was strategic about moving this vote until Thursday, however. That is the date that the country’s Surface Transportation bill expires. The infrastructure bill is the road to highway funding, and for a lot of members on the fence, Pelosi is hoping that might move the needle here.

Read more about this week’s events here.