Progressive leaders say they are willing to use the weight of their caucus, as well as the megaphone of close groups from outside, to try to force their party’s hand.
“We are winning on these issues. We are going to push it to the end, ”Jayapal, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in an interview.
Jayapal acknowledged that possible budget issues would be beyond the House’s control, saying her caucus would ‘do everything in its power’ to support Sanders as he campaigned for a broader bill.
The victories of the coronavirus assured by House Liberals are one of the first signs of a newly advanced progressive wing under Jayapal’s leadership. In the fall she an overhaul design of the group that consolidated her power and tightened the membership measures in an effort to make the sprawling progressive caucus more prevalent in the House.
And the new influence could be invaluable, as House leaders go beyond the winter’s pandemic trade talks, to an agenda packed with button bills, giving the narrow majority of Democrats all over immigration to gun control to voting rights. Speaker Nancy Pelosi can only afford to lose a handful of Democrats on any given vote, giving excessive leverage to the rival factions of the caucus.
Jayapal, who was ill with Covid in the early days of Biden’s presidency, says she has worked hard at all levels of Democratic leadership to secure an emergency relief bill that includes the minimum wage of $ 15 per hour, which was a priority for leftists. – including Democratic leaders – for more than a decade.
Jayapal said the CPC feels pretty good about Biden’s statement last Friday doubt about whether the wage increase would make it into the final bill – a moment she described as a ‘gut punch’. She pleaded in talks with House committee leaders and Biden advisers over the weekend to maintain the vigil. This included organizing a Sunday call with Senate Budget Committee chair Bernie Sanders attended by panel staff and House leaders to address some of the lengthy procedural questions.
“I did everything in my power to get it there,” Jayapal said, adding that she was also planning a backup option: an amendment to force the wage increase in the bill during a committee draft. . She was also in contact with influential outsiders such as the International Service Union.
The initial version of the bill – which was submitted to the House of Representatives’ Education and Labor Committee on Sunday – does not contain the minimum wage provision. But by Sunday night, Jayapal said she had received a text from Bobby Scott and Education and Labor Chairman Bobby Scott saying it would be recorded.
Senior Democrats say they have been working for weeks to include the minimum wage increase, arguing that there is little point in being conservative if their party owns all the power trees. Nevertheless, they privately acknowledge that the Senate ultimately has the power to determine what remains in the bill.
No one can predict whether policies such as the $ 15 minimum wage will remain intact in the final Senate bill. The question is subject to the Senate MP, who determines what policy in the budget process is known as reconciliation. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer evade questions Tuesday whether the provision would survive a parliamentary review.
Then there is the 50-50 split of the Senate, which means that a single Democrat – like Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia – could drop an item from the Liberal wish list.
‘Who worked the grocery stores, the drug stores, the butchers and the caretakers? “It was people who we did not think were worth paying $ 15 an hour, and that is the glue that holds us together,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) Said, a member of the progressive caucus and the Democratic leadership also promises to keep the policy alive.
For the past two years in the majority, House members have been well prepared for their current struggle, which has required them to work with the top Democrats to use large card bills, including an earlier increase in the minimum wage that led to intra-party bickering between the party’s more liberal and centrist members.
But the Liberals’ initial success in their party’s Covid negotiations is a shift from the previous Congress, when Jayapal and her members were sometimes forced to concede to their moderate – and more politically vulnerable – colleagues over major policy priorities such as immigration. , causes open warfare within the caucus.
It is unclear how long the bonhomie will last between the party’s two wings.
In the last congress, the messages that reached the House floor had no chance of becoming law, given the GOP-controlled White House and the Senate. The calculations for the Democratic leaders in both chambers are very different now that they are in full control of Washington and will pass a bill of nearly $ 2 trillion that can attract virtually unified support from their party without hitting any of the Senate’s budget equipment.
The interests could not be higher either, with billions of dollars for the distribution of vaccines, schools, small businesses and health workers as Biden tries to deliver its first major legislative priority. And Democrats are worried that any political misstep could cost them by mid-2022.
Jayapal said progressive individuals have an arsenal of tools to help keep up the pressure on Biden and Democratic leaders over the next two years, including their expanded activist base.
When the top Democrats considered intensifying the election for people to receive stimulus checks, Jayapal said she and her members decided to be eligible to vote and support them in broad public support for their position. The Washington Democrat led a letter with Biden ally Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), In which he urged the party not to lower the upper-income limit that has received more than 100 signatures.
Yet Liberals in the House have long said they must be willing to make concessions, as Democrats, under limited circumstances, are putting together the widest possible bill.
‘You can not be in advocacy politics without experiencing sadness. You plead for the best possible and ultimately you have to make a decision about what is significant progress, ” the veteran rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) Said.
“Not all of us,” Welch added, “are going to get what we want.”