POLITICO Playbook: Moderates fear Pelosi hanging them out to dry

Presented by the Financial Services Forum

DRIVING THE DAY

STILL SLIPPING: President JOE BIDEN’s average approval rating (46%) is in FORD territory and could be headed into TRUMP territory if he doesn’t turn it around. Here’s where every modern president rated at this point, according to FiveThirtyEight …

W. Bush: 82.6%
Kennedy: 76.1%
Truman: 75%
Eisenhower: 74.4%
Johnson: 74%
H.W. Bush: 69.5%
Nixon: 62.3%
Reagan: 60.1%
Carter: 54.3%
Obama: 53.4%
Clinton: 48.3%
Biden: 46%
Ford: 46%
Trump: 38.8%

Speaker NANCY PELOSI made a deal with about a dozen skeptical House moderates In late August to win their support on the party’s $3.5 trillion budget. If they backed the fiscal blueprint, Pelosi promised two things. One was to hold a vote on the bipartisan, $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill by Sept. 27, a sweetener for those members eager to campaign on the policy win.

The other promise was less straightforward but no less important: Rather than the House and Senate drafting and voting on separate sweeping reconciliation bills, she agreed to figure out the contours of the social spending package with her Senate counterparts on the front end, ensuring any bill that passes the House would have 51 votes to clear the upper chamber.

In Congress lingo, it’s known as “pre-conferencing.”

The moderates’ logic for this second demand went like this: Let’s figure out what the JOE MANCHINS and KYRSTEN SINEMAS of the Senate are willing to live with, then pass a single agreed-upon bill through both chambers. Don’t make us take tough votes on controversial proposals on taxes, climate change and the like — only to have them stripped out by the Senate and leave us with nothing to show for them come campaign time.

Now, however, some moderates are increasingly concerned that Pelosi and her team are playing fast and loose with that commitment. They worry that Democratic leaders are charging ahead with their own expansive version of the reconciliation package without getting on the same page with the Senate first — and making them walk the plank in the process.

“When we vote on tough things that never become law, we have to go home and defend that vote without the support of the White House. It puts the House majority at risk,” said one moderate Democratic source. “We don’t want to vote on something that won’t pass the Senate — period. … Instead, our leadership would rather twist the screws [on] moderates.”

The issue came to a head Wednesday when three House Democrats tanked Pelosi’s prescription drug plan in the Energy and Commerce Committee — an embarrassing setback that signals problems ahead (more on this below). One of their chief concerns: that the Senate remains opposed to the overhaul, which would raise nearly $700 billion to fund health care provisions.

Behind the scenes, we’re told, Rep. STEPHANIE MURPHY (D-Fla.), a Blue Dog leader who hails from a battleground district, has also been prodding leaders to do more to get buy-in from the Senate before moving forward. Notably, Murphy voted against the Ways and Means multitrillion-dollar tax provisions in committee, which were not “pre-conferenced” with the Senate.

We caught up with Murphy on Wednesday, and she told Playbook pre-conferencing is the most efficient way to proceed. “Every minute that we spend debating provisions that will never become law is a moment wasted, and is going to delay much-needed assistance to the American people,” she said, adding that these early votes on the reconciliation bill should be based on political reality, not “aspirational.”

BACK TO THE FUTURE: This is a familiar predicament for centrist House Democrats representing competitive districts. Many lost their seats in the early 1990s after BILL CLINTON pressed them to back a BTU-fuel tax — only to abandon the provision when it bogged down in the Senate. Republicans ran ads against those members, who didn’t like the provision in the first place, and they lost the majority in 1994. Similarly, the Blue Dogs nearly went extinct after they backed cap-and-trade legislation in 2009. It too went nowhere, and they were pilloried during the campaign. It’s not uncommon to hear moderates today say, “We don’t want to get ‘cap-and-traded’ or ‘BTUed’ again.”

THE LEADERSHIP VIEW: One senior Democratic aide told us that Pelosi is on the same page as these members and that “leadership has always wanted the same bill to pass both chambers.” Another senior Democratic aide told us there is a clear “misunderstanding about what pre-conferencing meant” when Pelosi made the deal.

“I think, if you’re the [JOSH] GOTTHIEMERS and the Murphys of the world, you think it means cutting the full deal with Sinema and Manchin. … But leadership is treating this like normal end-of-the-year negotiation.” In other words: right now, it’s more Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER ironing things out.

A third senior Democratic source told us leadership logistically can’t get 100% of the bill pre-conferenced; maybe around 80%. Plus, there’s an advantage to holding out, the person argued: “I think Pelosi wants to put out the $3.5 trillion [package] … use that as a baseline to try to give herself more leverage over Manchin and Sinema.”

Not all moderates are upset. One told us Pelosi’s promise was only to hash out a deal with the Senate before a floor vote in the House — not to do so ahead of votes at the committee level. This member is confident that will still happen.

As if to make the moderates’ point, the NRCC will be releasing a new round of paid ads today slamming vulnerable House Democrats over reconciliation, we’re told. Their targets are some of the same Democrats who struck the budget deal with the speaker: JIM COSTA (Calif.), CAROLYN BOURDEAUX (Ga.), JARED GOLDEN (Maine), JOSH GOTTHEIMER (N.J.), KURT SCHRADER (Ore.), VICENTE GONZALEZ (Texas) and HENRY CUELLAR (Texas).

“What’s the difference between Nancy Pelosi’s doormat and Congresswoman Carolyn Bourdeaux? Nothing,” the narrator intones.

Good Thursday morning, and an easy fast to those observing Yom Kippur. Thanks for reading Playbook. If you have an hour or two of idle time today, you could do worse than peruse Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time (updated for the first time in 17 years). Drop us a line with your favorites or worst snubs: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Tara Palmeri.

BIDEN’S THURSDAY:

— 10 a.m.: The president and VP KAMALA HARRIS will receive the President’s Daily Brief.

— 1:45 p.m.: Biden will speak from the East Room, per his official schedule, about “leveling the playing field in our economy to bring down costs and ensure that the backbone of the country, the middle class, can finally get a break.”

Press secretary JEN PSAKI will brief at 2:30 p.m.

THE HOUSE and THE SENATE are out.

PLAYBOOK READS

THE WHITE HOUSE

— Amid a busy fall agenda, Burgess Everett and Laura Barrón-Lópeztake a look at how “Democratic lawmakers are urging Biden to get more directly involved” with reconciliation, the debt ceiling and government funding bills.

Senate Majority Whip DICK DURBIN: “There is no comparable political force to a president, and specifically Biden at this moment.”

— On cue, a White House official offered us this preview of Biden’s speech today on the reconciliation bill: “He’ll also argue that we don’t need to reduce the cost of being rich in America; we need to lower the cost of raising a child, of prescription drugs, of taking care of an aging parent, of health care, of high-speed internet, and of hearing aids.”

For those keeping score, almost every one of those Biden priorities is currently under threat by intra-Dem conflicts.

— Robert Garley of FactCheck.org has one for the ages: “No One Pushed ‘Button’ to Prevent Biden from Speaking”

CONGRESS

— Three moderate House Dems — Reps. SCOTT PETERS (D-Calif.), KATHLEEN RICE (D-N.Y.) and Schrader — defeated a prescription drug pricing reform plan at the committee level Wednesday. (Here’s Alice Miranda Ollstein and Sarah Ferris’s report on what happened.)

Dems are freaking out about this, but Pelosi cannot say that she wasn’t warned.

Ollstein and Susannah Luthi scooped back in May that those three members and seven of their colleagues wrote Pelosi a letter saying they did not favor the leading Dem plan. As we noted Sept. 1 when we outlined the fraught politics of drug pricing, “on this issue, Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi start the House debate without majority support.”

We don’t think this is the end of the plan. In fact, it was always more likely that RON WYDEN (D-Ore.) over in the Senate would write a compromise bill. But it does show a few things: 1) Pelosi, known for her prowess as a legislative tactician, can’t conjure votes out of thin air, 2) House moderates are serious when they say they don’t want to vote on policies that can’t pass the Senate (see above), and 3) PhRMA is powerful.

— Dems’ latest effort to move Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL on the debt limit? “Shame,” says NYT’s Jonathan Weisman.

Good luck, say his allies. The kicker of the story, via former McConnell aide ANTONIA FERRIER: “The left trying to move Senator McConnell with shame or pressure is like trying to move Mount Everest with a light breeze.”

— Sinema to Manchin: Hold my beer. WaPo’s Mike DeBonis notes that while “Joe Manchin gets all the attention,” Kyrsten Sinema “could be an even bigger obstacle.” While she hasn’t been nearly as public as Manchin, “Sinema and her staff have been closely involved in the [reconciliation] talks, asking detailed questions to several key lawmakers and committee aides to understand the justification for proposed spending and tax increases.”

“Other Democrats familiar with Sinema’s work behind the scenes … said a major priority has been to ensure that matters that were negotiated out of the bipartisan infrastructure bill — additional transit funding, for instance — do not reappear in the Build Back Better bill, which would violate an agreement with Republicans to keep the two bills separate.

“Sinema, the Democrats said, has also been exploring ways to ‘means test’ some programs to target their effect on the nation’s neediest at a moment when many liberals argue that a much larger swath of Americans need help from the federal government.”

Sen. MITT ROMNEY (R-Utah): “Anyone who thinks she’s going to be a pushover is going to be severely surprised.”

— This was inevitable: “Conservative group files ethics complaint over Ocasio-Cortez appearance at Met Gala”

POLITICS ROUNDUP

NBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald: “Democrats warn of ‘canary in the coal mine’ for Latino voters in California recall”

Lara Seligman and Daniel Lippman, per two sources, say the WOODWARD/COSTA scoop about Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. MARK MILLEY secretly calling his Chinese counterpart amid Donald Trump’s erratic behavior is “greatly exaggerated.”

Marc Caputo and Gary Fineout report on how pro-vaccine Gov. RON DESANTIS is gradually making room for anti-vaxxers.

DENNIS HASTERT, former speaker of the House, reached a tentative settlement with the man who accused him of child sexual abuse, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The civil case had been slated to head to jury selection Monday.

Rich Lowry: “The ‘Stolen-Election’ Myth Has Become an Albatross for the GOP”

JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH

— NYT reports that Republicans are distancing themselves from Saturday’s “Justice for J6” rally in support of defendants charged in the riot.

Sen. JOHN THUNE (R-S.D.): “There are a lot of clearly angry people who want to march on the Capitol. … I haven’t talked to a single Republican up here in the Senate that has encouraged or enabled anything like that.”

Sen. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-Ala.): “I don’t expect a lot of people there. … I haven’t heard anything about it. I will not be there.”

Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.) on the police response if violence erupts: “They need to take a firm line, buddy. … If anybody gets out of line, they need to whack ’em.”

Also not attending: Rep. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-Ga.) and Sen. JOSH HAWLEY (R-Mo.).

THE PANDEMIC

— Not good: “Montana’s Largest Hospital Close to Rationing Life-Saving Care”

— AP’s Lauren Weber and Anna Maria Barry-Jester report that “Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry about lockdowns and mask mandates, are taking away the powers that state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases.”

“It’s kind of like having your hands tied in the middle of a boxing match,” said KELLEY VOLLMAR, executive director of the Jefferson County Health Department in Missouri.

PLAYBOOKERS

Peter Thiel recommended 150 people for positions in the Trump administration, including “numerous figures who were too extreme even for the most extreme members of Trump’s inner circle,” per a major excerpt from Max Chafkin’s new book in Bloomberg.

Nicki Minaj said she received an invite from the White House to talk about her cousin’s friend’s testicles. But a White House official told our Alex Thompson that they just offered to connect Minaj to talk to one of their doctors about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.

John Durham is getting ready to indict a bit player in the Russia investigation for allegedly lying to the FBI. Brandon Van Grack, who prosecuted Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI before Flynn was pardoned by Trump: “Apparently it’s once again a crime to lie to the FBI.”

Ahmad Massoud has hired a D.C. lobbyist.

SPOTTED: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) ordering a crispy rice bowl at the Capitol Hill Sweetgreen on Wednesday night.

MEDIA MOVES — Laura McGann and Mark Bauman’s forthcoming D.C. news startup is rolling out a big batch of new hires: Justin Rood as investigations editor, Dave Levitan as science and climate reporter, Maggie Severns as policy reporter, Nikhil Kumar as deputy global editor, Joshua Keating as global security reporter, Serena Golden as special projects editor, Jason Paladino as investigative reporter, Matthew Zeitlin as domestic economics reporter, Kaila Philo as government and political institutions reporter, Anya Van Wagtendonk as misinformation reporter, Benjamin Powers as technology reporter, Morgan Richardson as assistant editor, Jackie Padilla and Jake Garcia as video producers, and Sarah McHaney as director of comms.

— Paul Volpe is rejoining the NYT to lead a new cross-functional team focused on standards, values and credibility. He most recently was executive editor and senior editor for emerging products at POLITICO. Announcement

STAFFING UP — HUD announced several recent hires: Crystal Bergemann as senior adviser for climate, Patrick Byrne as congressional relations specialist, Demetria McCain as principal deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, Freedom Murphy as deputy press secretary, Daniela Perez as assistant press secretary, Mia Pittman as deputy assistant secretary for risk management and regulatory affairs at the FHA, Nathan Shultz as senior adviser at the FHA, and Brad Pollock and Michaela West as special assistants.

TRANSITIONS — Karen Hanley will be EVP at The Permitting Institute. She previously was acting executive director of Biden’s Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council … Jon van Gelder is now an impact strategist at We Stand United. He previously was politics producer at MTV News. … Jennifer Sime is joining Physicians for Human Rights as its new COO. She most recently was SVP at the International Rescue Committee, where she worked for 22 years. … Allison Schneider is now director of media relations at the American Council of Engineering Companies. She previously was senior director of comms at the National Beer Wholesalers Association.

WEDDING — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Marlon Reis got married Wednesday at the University of Colorado. Colorado Public Radio’s Bente Birkeland has the details.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) … Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards … Julián Castro … Hogan Gidley … Jason Zengerle … RENEWPR’s Ben Finzel … Jill Lesser of National Geographic … Paul Orzulak of West Wing Writers … Cleta Mitchell … Lauren Dillon of Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-Minn.) office … POLITICO’s Kevin Yamamura and Xinran Xu … Derek Mitchell of the National Democratic Institute … Sara Goo of Axios … Lori Brutten … NBC’s Richard Engel … NAM’s Jordan Stoick … Laurie Knight of the National Beer Wholesalers Association … Facebook’s Jackie Rooney and Josh Ginsberg … CNN’s Angelica Grimaldi and Hannah Sarisohn … Richard Perle … Oliver Schwab … Ian Walton … Chuck Westover … David Lavan … Elliot Vice ... Nathan Hurst … former Reps. Ralph Abraham (R-La.) and David Rivera (R-Fla.) … Josh Benson of Old Town Media … E&E News’ Ester Wells … Christine Ciccone of the International Fund for Agricultural Development

Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.

Send Playbookers tips to [email protected]. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike Zapler, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Allie Bice, Eli Okun and Garrett Ross.