ClaimDream

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reversing a months-long vow to push through the two major planks of Democrats’ domestic agenda in tandem, a huge shift just days before a critical infrastructure vote.

Pelosi explained her thinking in a rare Monday night caucus session, saying she and President Joe Biden are continuing to push the Senate on negotiations related to the social spending package, but the House must move ahead on infrastructure this week before surface transportation funding expires Thursday.

The speaker had declared earlier this summer that the House would only pass Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill if both chambers had also agreed to the party’s broader social spending plan. The California Democrat privately told members that the thinking began to change 10 days ago when she learned that Democrats would need to scale back the initial $3.5 trillion price tag for that spending bill — a massive legislative task.

“It all changed, so our approach had to change,” Pelosi told her caucus Monday, according to Democrats present.

“We had to accommodate the changes that were being necessitated.” And we cannot be ready to say, she added, “Until the Senate passed the bill, we can’t do [infrastructure].”

The California Democrat said Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer continue to push Senate moderates to agree to a topline spending target, saying spending bill action in her chamber is effectively frozen until that happens.

“We are not going to pass a bill that won’t pass the Senate. And that’s why we have to come up with a number,” Pelosi told Democrats. “But we’re not there yet.”

But even as Pelosi attempted to rally her caucus around the new plan, the senator who would be key to any deal showed no movement.

“It would be a shame if anyone took credit for sinking an infrastructure bill this country needs,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), adding that those warnings would not affect him. “I don’t do really good on threats,” he said.

House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries said Democratic leaders would continue to try to push the Senate on the broader bill this week while moving ahead on the infrastructure vote.

“What’s holding everything up are a few senators who aren’t providing us with any clarity as to where they ultimately will land,” Jeffries said. “That’s the issue in front of us right now, and we have to try to resolve it in the next few days.”

Still, Democrats have not started to whip the infrastructure vote and some progressives signaled Monday night that they wouldn’t go along with the plan.

“Absolutely not. A deal is a deal. We are not passing anything short of having the full Build Back Better agenda,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) when asked if progressives would be willing to advance the infrastructure bill even as the broader bill remained unfinished.

Sources close to Pelosi say the speaker was left without a choice given the looming expiration date for highway and transit programs and the resistance from Senate moderates to publicly commit to overall funding or program guarantees within the broader spending package.

The closed-door session Monday marked the first time the Democratic caucus sat down since Pelosi announced the the House would vote Thursday on Biden’s infrastructure package. The speaker also declared over the weekend that the House would vote this week on Democrats’ sprawling domestic policy bill — an aim so loft that few Democrats believe it is possible in the coming days.

Instead, Pelosi and key members of her caucus are focused on reaching a public agreement with key senators on the total cost of the social spending plan as well as other major aspects. But it’s unclear exactly how many specifics Democrats will secure from Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), the Senate’s most vocal centrists, in time for their Thursday vote, according to people close to their thinking — which Democrats believe has essentially forced their party to delink the two bills.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer confirmed after the meeting that the infrastructure vote would happen Thursday: “There is an absolute consensus we need to pass these two bills, period.”

In the push to reach a bicameral accord, Sinema has been in close contact with a small group of House moderates, including Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.). Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) has also been in touch with some of those moderates, including Sinema.

Dynamics within the caucus remain deeply strained, with progressives publicly vowing to oppose the Senate’s bipartisan public works bill without passage of the social package, and moderates threatening to tank those party-line talks without an infrastructure vote this week.

Some moderates — who had demanded the infrastructure vote this week — privately emerged from the meeting feeling like they had secured a win over the left faction of their caucus.

In the Democratic meeting Monday, moderate Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) told her colleagues to stop “using the word ‘leverage.’”

“Delaying the bill isn’t going to make us any more or less likely to support reconciliation,” she said. “I am a legislator, not a lemming.”

Even as progressives and centrists remained publicly intractable Monday, both sides had been slowly starting to concede in private that they will have to give some ground in order to ensure Biden’s domestic agenda stays afloat.

Publicly though, Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was still insisting as of Monday afternoon that progressives wanted to see the sprawling spending plan passed in both the House and Senate before the caucus will support the infrastructure vote.

“What we have said is we need the entire reconciliation bill,” Jayapal told reporters. “Some framework that can still take another couple months to get done, that the Senate hasn’t agreed to, that hasn’t been voted on, that’s not going to do it for us.”

Jayapal’s thinking had not changed after Pelosi’s shift to decouple the two spending bills.

“We are going to vote for both bills after the reconciliation bill is done,” she said after the caucus meeting.

Jayapal also downplayed the surface transportation date, saying the program’s authorization has expired many times in the past but “nothing happens as long as we keep the appropriations going.”

The list of lingering questions about Biden’s broader package remains long. Both Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are still wrangling their members about what they’re willing to support on both the scope and substance of the legislation. Democrats are split over the price tag of the bill — currently at $3.5 trillion — as well as huge questions about government drug price negotiations and expanding Medicare and Medicaid.

“I think we’re going to do everything Nancy Pelosi said we’re going to do. That’s usually the way things turn out,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). “It’s not pretty, it’s not gonna be easy, but what I know is that there’s not a single Democrat who will walk into that room who’s interested in sacking our quarterback.”

Pelosi and Schumer spoke to Biden via phone before the House caucus meeting Monday evening. Several senior Democrats are also hoping Biden will more forcefully weigh in on the infrastructure vote Thursday, publicly declaring that the bill needs to be passed by the House on that day.

So far the president has not done so directly, instead speaking about the overall urgency of his agenda during a brief interaction with reporters Monday. Without specifying a deadline, he said “we got three things to do: the debt ceiling, the continuing resolution, and the two pieces of legislation. If we do that, the country is going to be in great shape.”

Pelosi teed up the infrastructure vote on Thursday for two reasons; the first is to exert maximum pressure on members to vote yes, given the expiration of key surface transportation funding that day.

Senior Democrats on both sides of the Capitol are hoping to secure that official “framework” for that policy bill that would have buy-in from Senate moderates — ideally enough of a commitment to convince liberals in the House to back down on their threat and support the infrastructure bill.

Progressives say that framework must lay out precise details on what the Senate centrists are willing to support on everything from Medicare expansion to climate provisions. If not, they will not vote for the infrastructure bill.

Democrats are gearing up for an intense few days as Pelosi and her leadership team attempt to lock down the votes on Thursday.

“The temperature will never go down. People are passionate. The heat won’t go down until this is over,” Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) said leaving Monday night’s meeting, adding that the speaker took “meticulous” notes from each speaker. “She’s listening to everybody.”

Burgess Everett and Nicholas Wu contributed.

Democratic leaders keep ruling out what may be the only way to avoid a debt default, leaving lawmakers and financial markets uncertain of how a dramatic clash with Republicans over raising the debt ceiling will play out.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seemed to shut the door on using budget reconciliation to raise the debt ceiling. Instead, he is leaning on Republicans to stop blocking a debt limit increase as the country creeps closer and closer to cataclysmic debt limit breach in three weeks.

Schumer concluded on Tuesday afternoon that “going through reconciliation is risky to the country and is a non-starter.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Schumer’s position is “shared by many members” but declined to say if she supports the idea or aligns herself directly with Schumer: “We’ll see what our options are.”

There’s mass confusion among congressional Democrats about how the majority party and its slim majorities will avoid a potential default just three weeks away. Senate Republicans on Monday sank Democrats’ plan to fund the government into December and kick the debt limit through the 2022 midterms, then they blocked an effort from Schumer to lift the debt ceiling by a majority vote on Tuesday.

Consternation over the debt limit is reaching the highest levels of Democratic leadership as uncertainty hangs over Congress. President Joe Biden discussed the possibility of raising the debt ceiling via budget reconciliation on Monday evening on a telephone call with Pelosi and Schumer, the latest sign that Democrats are searching for a way around entrenched GOP opposition.

No final decision was made on the call, according to two Democrats familiar with the conversation. But the GOP’s stubborn opposition to raising the debt ceiling has Democrats fuming as they search for a way to avoid a shutdown on Friday and a default in October.

“We may have to use reconciliation. I think that would be a sad statement of Republican responsibility,” conceded House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. He later walked that back and said it was “not the option we’re pursuing.” Privately, however, Democrats say congressional leaders are not ruling it out as it may be the only way around the Senate GOP.

Reconciliation allows Democrats to avoid a GOP filibuster, but requires close coordination between the House and Senate and could take weeks. Schumer has been walking his caucus through how cumbersome it could be to use the arcane budget process to raise the debt ceiling and the many pitfalls ahead if leaders choose to follow that route.

Democrats are likely to pass a government funding bill without the debt ceiling attached to head off a shutdown this week. But that doesn’t mean they are committed to using reconciliation to lift the debt ceiling. Instead, Schumer has warned his caucus that the gambit would be “burdensome and untenable,” according to one of the Democrats.

“Using reconciliation is a non-starter. We have gone through it twice, I’ve listened, and it takes him about 15 minutes for Chuck Schumer to explain how that works, what it involves. Three or four weeks of activity in the House and Senate,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

There’s little time to waste. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Congress on Tuesday that lawmakers must raise the debt ceiling by around Oct. 18 to avoid a debt default. That means Democrats would need to start moving on the time-consuming reconciliation process in the coming days to avoid a default, should they choose that path over continuing confrontation with Republicans.

On Tuesday, Schumer asked Senate Republicans to allow a standalone vote on the debt limit at a majority threshold rather than the typically needed 60 votes, though Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected that ask. Though he has pushed Democrats to raise the debt limit on their own, McConnell prefers they use budget reconciliation, a more excruciating maneuver.

“Leader Schumer wants Democrats to be able to do it alone if Republicans refuse to help. So that’s really what is being pursued at this point in time,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. She pleaded for McConnell to “get out of the way and let Democrats do it alone.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made clear that Republicans are intent on making it as difficult as possible for Democrats to raise the debt ceiling — even as they insist Democrats do it all on their own .

“When this fails I fully expect Schumer will surrender and do what he could have done weeks or months ago, which is raise the debt ceiling with Democratic votes,” Cruz said.

When asked why not just allow Schumer to do exactly that on Tuesday rather than force Democrats to pursue reconciliation, he responded: “He wants consent because all 50 Republicans would have to consent. It’s the same game and he knows the outcome.”

Senate Democrats also might need to cancel a mid-October recess to raise the debt ceiling on their own via reconciliation, which allows the party to avoid a GOP filibuster but would require negotiations with the parliamentarian — the Senate’s rules arbiter — and some degree of cooperation from Republicans. McConnell confidently predicted that Democrats will raise the debt ceiling “because we always do,” though typically both parties support an increase.

“I know the country is not going to default. I know they have the votes to do this,” McConnell said in an interview. “I don’t have any doubt that they will take care of this.”

But Schumer has more plans in mind for filleting Republicans as the party of “default” and may force them to vote a second time on the House-passed funding and debt proposal they blocked on Monday.

House leaders are also considering passing a spending bill that leaves out the debt limit and sending the Senate standalone legislation on that issue in the coming days. That bill is expected to lift the debt ceiling through the November midterms next year, according to two Democrats familiar with the plan.

Pelosi told Democrats that “there might be a timely vote” on the debt limit as soon as this week and asked if there’s anyone in her caucus “who will not vote to preserve the full faith and credit in the United States,” according to Democrats in the private meeting.

Democratic aides with knowledge of the plan say the House will likely vote on the clean debt limit bill on Wednesday, along with a separate vote on a continuing resolution to fund the government this week that does not include raising the debt ceiling. Government funding runs out on Oct. 1.

Marianne LeVine and Myah Ward contributed to this report.

Democrats wanted clarity Tuesday from Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema after back-to-back meetings with President Joe Biden. They didn’t get it.

During a private meeting with the president, Sinema made clear she’s still not on board with the party’s $3.5 trillion social spending plan and is hesitant to engage on some specifics until the bipartisan infrastructure package passes the House, according to a person who spoke with her.

“This is the third time she said she has told the president, ‘I’m not there,’” the person said, quoting Sinema as telling the president: “‘I’ve been very clear with you from the start.’”

Sinema has problems with both the price tag and some of the tax increases devised to pay for it. After returning from his White House meeting, Manchin said that he did not give Biden a top-line number and made “no commitments from my standpoint.”

Sinema and Manchin’s approach to the negotiations has frozen Biden’s jobs and families plan and potentially may lead to a high-profile failure of a bipartisan infrastructure bill on the House floor as progressives threaten rebellion. But without more details from the moderate duo, any hope of a bicameral agreement on Biden’s agenda is a pipe dream.

Manchin and Sinema met with Biden separately Tuesday, the second time in less than a week that they paid a visit to the White House to lay out their concerns and haggle with the president over reducing Democrats’ plans to spend $3.5 trillion. Sinema also returned to the White House twice more to hash out details with staff as Manchin huddled separately with Biden for more than an hour.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki described the meeting with Sinema as “constructive” and said she and Biden “agreed that we are at a pivotal moment [and] need to continue to work to finalize the path forward.”

Even as the House tees up a vote on the senators’ bipartisan physical infrastructure bill for this week, Manchin and Sinema have yet to publicly indicate how far they’re willing to go on Democrats’ party-line legislation addressing climate change, child care and a host of other party priorities.

The back-and-forth between Biden and the two senators is making Democrats anxious about the prolonged timeline for the negotiations. And many are in the dark about what spending figure either of them would support, let alone their policy objections.

“What I know is that the longer these debates hang out there the easier it is for the opposition to mislabel and twist what we’re trying to do,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “If we’re going to come to an agreement it would behoove us to do it sooner rather than later so that we can go out and start explaining it to people.”

Privately, patience is waning in the Senate Democratic caucus.

“I’m worried my colleagues are going to shoot themselves in the foot,” said one Senate Democrat, who spoke under condition of anonymity. “We should find a solid number and move on.”

For months, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have insisted on a “two-track strategy,” which meant Democrats would not pass the bipartisan infrastructure package without the party-line social spending bill. But by setting up a vote Thursday on the bipartisan physical infrastructure bill, Pelosi is effectively de-linking the two, prompting consternation among progressives who don’t want to lose leverage on the social spending plan.

“The agreement from the beginning was that all the pieces would move together… and that one piece wouldn’t be broken off and moved ahead of the others,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “Both Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats in the House and the Senate all said that’s the deal. I want to make sure we hold to that deal. I don’t want to see that deal broken.”

Manchin and Sinema have consistently signaled that they do not support the package costing $3.5 trillion. During last week’s meeting, Biden urged Manchin to come back to him with a number that he could support. But Manchin has indicated that he’s in no rush to make a decision.

“We had good honest, straightforward negotiations. There were no commitments made at all, no commitments from my standpoint, just good negotiations talking about the needs of the country,” Manchin said. As far as a topline spending number, he said: “We haven’t talked about it, no. Just talking about the need. I’m looking at the needs of the country.”

Sinema’s office declined to comment for this story.

Meanwhile, Democrats face a lengthy to-do list with little time.

“We’re reaching a point where we need to bring this to closure. I think that’s obvious,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “We have four major challenges on us at once: Funding the government, dealing with the debt ceiling, bipartisan infrastructure bill and reconciliation. That’s a big agenda. I think a breakthrough on one of those will help.”

Democratic leaders are starting to acknowledge that any social spending package that passes the House and Senate will have to take a major haircut from the $3.5 trillion blueprint both chambers of Congress approved in August. But that’s not stopping some progressives from expressing their frustration with Thursday’s vote on the bipartisan physical infrastructure bill.

Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) even called for progressives to vote the legislation down, should the White House and Senate moderates fail to reach an agreement. Meanwhile, Murphy added that he may have taken a different approach to the bipartisan infrastructure bill had he known it would be de-linked from the social spending plan.

“Clearly the rules are changing, sometimes that’s necessary given changing realities. But it can be pretty frustrating,” he said.

On the other side of the Capitol, House Democrats are paying unusual attention to Manchin and Sinema and are largely in a holding pattern until the two senators make a decision on a topline. Pelosi has indicated to members that she will not move legislation that can’t pass the Senate.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the No. 5 House Democrat, said he remained hopeful that the conversations with Manchin and Sinema would lead to a tangible result “so we’ll know what’s possible in the House.” And Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) indirectly said Sinema is the House’s biggest problem during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, predicting Manchin will get on board but expressing concern that a senator from a Biden-won state won’t give a number she’s willing to support.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a leading progressive who met with Sinema recently, said of the duo: “They need to tell us what they don’t agree with. And we need to actually be able to negotiate.”

Still, Democrats are refraining from making any predictions about when Manchin and Sinema might make up their minds. And even as they wait it out, for the most part they’re declining to criticize the two moderates publicly, well aware that they will need their votes for any legislation that passes the Senate.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) reiterated Tuesday that she is “still waiting” for Manchin and Sinema to offer specifics about what they want.

When asked if she was frustrated with the two of them, she replied: “Just a tad.”

Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.

Sometime next month, the United States will run up against its statutory debt limit. Unless Congress raises the ceiling, the federal government will either default on the national debt or be compelled to freeze critical domestic and defense initiatives — or possibly, even both.

The Biden administration has asked Congress to raise the debt limit, meeting what was once a routine responsibility of governing. But Republicans in Congress have refused. Given the minority’s ability to block nearly all legislation in the Senate, they have the power to hurl the country over an economic cliff, costing millions of jobs and erasing trillions of dollars in household wealth, overnight.

To be clear, in asking for a boost to the debt limit, the Biden administration isn’t asking Congress to pay for new programs. It’s asking Congress to finance initiatives the government has already authorized and costs it has already incurred — including $7.8 trillion in debt that the Trump administration racked up in just four years, principally owing to tax cuts for corporations and wealthy earners that Republicans approved on a party-line vote.

This isn’t a new story. The Republican Party has wielded the debt limit as a partisan cudgel since 2009. When a Republican president is in power, they happily rely on bipartisan congressional support to ensure the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. When a Democrat occupies the White House, they weaponize the debt limit and refuse to participate in its adjustment. It’s a tale of unabashed partisanship — but by now, it’s a familiar tale.

There is another dimension of the debate, however, that goes unnoticed. The idea of a “limit” or “ceiling” on the public debt sounds like an important constraint on borrowing, the kind of thing the Constitution demands to keep a runaway White House in check. In reality, it’s a 20th century innovation, originally intended to give more, not less, authority to the president. A measure born of necessity during World War I and World War II to allow the Wilson and Roosevelt administrations greater leeway in financing government operations has evolved into a partisan noose.

Understanding the origins of the debt limit places into sharp focus how radical its current weaponization really is.

The U.S. government has always borrowed money to finance its operations. The total amount of outstanding debt hovered below $100 million in the years prior to 1860 but rose to over $2.7 billion during the Civil War. By the end of the 19th century, it stood at roughly $2 billion, a figure that more or less remained steady until World War I, when military mobilization necessitated a wave of borrowing, causing the national debt to balloon to $27 billion.

Less important than how much the government owed was the mechanism by which it raised debt. Prior to World War I, Congress authorized specific debt issuances. During the Civil War the legislative branch passed several bills permitting the Treasury Department to sell bonds at specific maturities and coupons. One popular issuance were 5-and-20s, which paid 6 percent annual interest over a 20-year maturity date, with an option allowing the government to redeem the face value after five years. Hundreds of thousands of Northern citizens purchased the government paper in a show of patriotic fervor. Generally speaking, new debt authorizations were earmarked for specific purposes — for instance, Panama Canal bonds, which could be used only to finance construction of the historic commercial passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Until World War I, the Treasury Department enjoyed little leeway in rolling over or consolidating existing issuances, devising the terms of new debt offerings or moving funds between one committed stream and another. Congress largely dictated the terms; the Treasury Department’s principal role was to market and administer public debt instruments. This disparate system worked well enough when government borrowing remained at modest levels, but during World War I, the sharp spike in borrowing and spending made the old system impractical. The Wilson administration needed flexibility to raise and commit money for war production. In response to this reality, Congress for the first time set aggregate levels of debt financing and granted the Treasury Department more freedom to move money where it was needed. It was the origin of what we know today as the debt ceiling, though specific issuances — for instance, Liberty Loans — still retained their own statutory limits.

Beginning in 1941 the system evolved further, when Congress passed the first of a series of Public Debt Acts that both raised (on several occasions) the overall debt ceiling and consolidated all borrowing authority under the Treasury Department. Going forward, different departments and agencies borrowed what they needed from Treasury, which in turn issued, managed and marketed debt within the statutory limit. It’s effectively how things work today.

During the House debate over the Public Debt Act of 1941, Rep. Robert Doughton of North Carolina, Democratic chair of the Ways and Means Committee and the bill’s floor manager, emphasized that the purpose of the measure was to “provide funds to cover the appropriations, authorizations, and commitments made by Congress” to finance the government’s war effort. “The bill neither appropriates nor authorizes the expenditure of any funds. Its sole purpose is to enable the Treasury, under such restrictions and limits as the bill sets forth, to secure the necessary funds to finance the program which the Congress has authorized or will authorize by further legislation.”

This was the crux of the argument. Even in 1941 Republican deficit hawks opposed consolidating and raising the debt ceiling as an exercise (in Doughton’s words) in “boondoggling and wasteful extravagance.” In response, Doughton accused his Republican critics of engaging in “political partisanship” and reminded the House that “it would be very inconsistent, indeed, for the Congress to authorize appropriations and not provide the Treasury with necessary funds to cover such authorizations and appropriations.” In fact, “the gentlemen of the minority have voted for these appropriations also.”

The question at hand was not whether Congress should insist that “economies” be taken in other areas of federal spending, as the nation mobilized for war. Doughton affirmed that “members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are of one mind and accord” on this point. At issue was whether Congress would authorize the Treasury Department to pay for what Congress had already appropriated, and how much authority it would grant the department in managing the nation’s debt.

The specifics of how the debt ceiling operates have evolved since World War II. In response to wrangling with the Nixon administration, in 1974 Congress passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which removed the debt limit debate from the annual budget process — ostensibly to provide legislators greater freedom to scrutinize or reject more borrowing without feeling obligated to vote down an entire year’s budget framework. But in the main, the system has remained consistent for over 80 years. So has its rationale.

As was the case in 1941, today, Congress is fully empowered to reduce federal borrowing. All it needs to do is spend less, or tax more. As Doughton pointed out eight decades ago, the time to do so is during the budget and appropriations process, not after the money has been allocated and spent during the debt limit process.

Fast forward to 2021. After adding $7.8 trillion to the public debt in just four years, between 2017 and 2021, Republicans have rediscovered their commitment to fiscal probity. Speaking for his party, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has made clear that GOP senators will provide not a single vote to raise the debt ceiling, even though the government risks a default on its obligations as soon as October — and even though the very need for an adjustment owes to spending and tax cuts that McConnell’s party approved between 2017 and 2021.

It matters little to McConnell that his caucus enabled Donald Trump to grow the deficit in percentage terms by more than every other president except George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln. His calculations are deeply cynical.

But the political theater currently playing itself out on Capitol Hill places in sharp relief a core truth: The perennial debate over whether Congress should pay for what Congress already spent has become a political charade — entirely divorced from the original intent of the debt ceiling. Conceived to help presidents meet the demands of national emergencies and to ensure that the government can pay bills that Congress has already racked up, the debt ceiling has become a blunt instrument in the hands of a radical and destructive minority.

As they address the looming emergency, Democrats might consider the possibility that the debt limit no longer meets the purpose for which it was designed. It may be time to eliminate it.

Joe Biden’s domestic agenda at the moment is, like his presidency, in peril.

It is caught between the Scylla of progressives insisting the bipartisan infrastructure bill can’t pass the House before the reconciliation bill passes the Senate and the Charybdis of moderates insisting the bipartisan infrastructure bill must pass the House before anything else happens.

It is, to switch metaphors, a standoff out of an old Western, with the intervention that will lead to all factions holstering their weapons not yet evident.

Still, the conventional wisdom is that Democrats will get both bills in the end. They will stare into the abyss, recognize the partywide debacle that would ensue if they pass nothing, and agree, somehow or other, on the infrastructure bill and a reduced reconciliation bill.

It’s certainly true that, whatever the intervening drama, must-pass spending bills always pass. (There are very occasionally government shutdowns, which are only temporary pauses until the bills pass anyway.) But the possibility of a complete meltdown over the Biden spending bill shouldn’t be underestimated.

The reconciliation bill isn’t too big to fail, but big enough potentially to fail spectacularly. It has the hallmarks of other signature presidential initiatives that, despite huge investments of presidential political capital, have gone down at the hands of a president’s own party.

In an unimaginable defeat at the time, Bill Clinton couldn’t get his health care bill through Congress, despite a roughly 80-seat House majority and 56 or 57 senators.

After his reelection in 2004, George W. Bush’s Social Security reform fizzled in a Republican Congress.

Out of the gate, Donald Trump suffered an embarrassing defeat on Obamacare repeal in 2017.

So, no, victory isn’t inevitable, no matter how much Biden needs his bills.

It is a well-established axiom that delay, which characterized the Clinton health care debate, is a killer. Momentum is lost. Entropy takes a hand. Presidents don’t tend to get more popular after an election, and if a delay pushes a fight into a midterm-election year, members of his own party are likelier to conclude they need to go their own way to protect their interests.

This is why Sen. Joe Manchin’s talk of putting off consideration of the reconciliation bill until 2022 is itself an existential threat to its prospects.

It’s always a warning sign when a specific, partywide electoral mandate hasn’t been built for an agenda.

Clinton didn’t set out in any detail his ambitions on health care during the 1992 campaign, which were instead cooked up by a health care task force after his election.

Bush hardly campaigned on Social Security reform, and never had his congressional party on board.

Trump had no idea, and neither did the rest of the party, about what would replace Obamacare.

Biden did lay out out his agenda last year and it was clearly very ambitious, but he never made it front and center in the campaign. He didn’t stump every day on $6 trillion in new spending. Instead, he presented himself as the anti-Trump who would bring the country together, cut bipartisan deals in Congress and defeat the virus.

Obviously the size of congressional majorities matters. Clinton and Bush couldn’t work their will despite healthy numbers, whereas Trump had a very slender majority in the Senate, opening the way for John McCain’s famous thumbs-down.

Biden technically doesn’t even have a Senate majority, hence the power invested in Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s thumbs.

This gets to what sets Biden apart from all of his predecessors — the massive disconnect between the scale of the legislation he seeks and the narrow majorities that are supposed to pass it.

The amount of spending in reconciliation is greater than Barack Obama’s stimulus in 2009, which Democrats passed when they had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

There’s more new health care spending than in Obamacare, which, again, passed the Senate when Democrats had 60 (then 59) votes.

There’s a hunt for villains among progressive commentators as the Biden agenda encounters turbulence. There really shouldn’t be any mystery here, though. A president who has an approval rating in the mid-40s, a tie in the Senate and single-digit majority in the House is having difficulties passing the most sweepingly ambitious progressive agenda in decades.

What else would anyone expect?

The Democrats’ factions are empowered to make their conflicting demands because the margins are so small.

The bill is so huge, encompassing everything from climate to perhaps immigration, also because the margins are so small. (To avoid the filibuster, everything has to be in reconciliation instead of broken up and passed piecemeal in lower-stakes fights.)

Given the real risks of failure, it would make sense for Democrats to pass the infrastructure bill and pocket that success, then move on to reconciliation, realizing one way or the other that it is going to be slimmed down.

But that’s not the mood right now.

As Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute has pointed out, the process of a bill passing and a bill failing in Congress is often indistinguishable, so in the coming weeks it will be difficult to tell whether Democrats are, messily and haltingly, getting to “yes,” or stumbling into a box canyon.

But history says they should be afraid, very afraid.