On the Brink

President Biden's infrastructure bills are stalled in Congress, with moderate and progressive Democrats at odds with each other over how much to spend in new programs - "human infrastructure" - in a budget reconciliation measure.  Moderates want to go no higher than $1.5 trillion in spending over the net ten years on child care, climate change, and college tuition, while progressives want to spent no less than $3.5 trillion - after compromising down from $6 trillion.  And if House progressives don't get what they want, they're going to vote against a bipartisan bill on rebuilding roads, bridges and railways already passed by the Senate. The vote is scheduled for tomorrow and anyone who thinks it's going to pass while the $3.5 trillion bill - called a reconciliation bill because it's meant to reconcile with the budget - is opposed by moderate Democrats in both houses is either an unwarranted optimist, a moron, or both.

And the time to cut a deal is growing short.

Republicans, meanwhile, have taken advantage of Democratic infighting by refusing to cooperate on keeping the government open at the start of the 2022 fiscal year this coming Friday and also refusing to cooperate on raising the debt ceiling by not allowing itto be attached to a bill to keep the government open, meaning the United States could default for the first time ever as early as next week. 

All this while a major hurricane churns in the Atlantic Ocean and could strike the East Coast by the end of the week, causing billions of dollars in damage?

Prepare to meet thy doom.      

Fork In the Road

Just before President Biden and a group of Democratic and Republican senators (below) reached a bipartisan deal on a compromise infrastructure package, he an the Democrats announced that there would be a reconciliation bill including everything left out of the compromise that the Democrats could pass in the Senate on their own without a filibuster threat.  This is like a magician telling his audience how he does one of his tricks.  And when Biden said that he would veto the compromise deal if the reconciliation bill didn't get passed, that was like a magician showing his audience how he does one of his tricks. 

Although Biden walked back his comments, saying he's still committed to the bipartisan deal, I can't understand how Biden thinks this two-track approach to infrastructure is going to work.  Republicans who may have backed the deal may now be against it because of the reconciliation bill containing items that the GOP did not agree to, such as day care centers and climate action.  But many pundits seem to think that the deal will hold because Republicans need to go back to their constituents to show that they've gotten things done just as much as Democrats do.  The big risk in Biden's gambit is that the Republicans would be happy to torpedo the deal in the Senate and blame its failure on Biden and the Democrats for insisting on a "progressive wish list."  However, Biden's veto threat may not be so much directed against Republicans as against some of his fellow Democrats - the moderate wing, to be precise, the wing that may be reluctant to go for a European-style investment in human capital because of the costs involved.  Biden seems to think that standing firmly behind the so-called "progressive wish list" to get Democratic Senate moderates like Kyrsten Sinema (Joe Manchin is on board with Biden's plan, saying that reconciliation is inevitable) will back the reconciliation measure as a price to pay for getting the bipartisan deal passed to shore up support from their own constituents at home.

There will be more work on the infrastructure package in the weeks ahead as the details are finalized, and anything could happen.  But if Joe Biden somehow manages to get everything he wants with party unity on his side, that would mean he has a magic trick up his sleeve that he's not going to show us.  

North and South

The two Koreas are talking again.  A couple of weeks ago, North Korea and South Korea held talks on the future of the peninsula, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in hopes to ease tensions with Kim Jong Un as the North Korean dictator continues to nuke up.

For now, the two Koreas have one thing keeping diplomacy alive - the Olympics. 

Koreans on both sides of the DMZ have a lot riding on the success of the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea in February, which is a way to promote peace and harmony globally, but a successful winter Olympiad could help avoid a nuclear confrontation on the peninsula and cool passions, just as the summer Olympiad in Seoul thirty years ago allowed the Republic of Korea in the south to become a true democracy after a long period of restricted political freedom and military rule.  Athletes from the two Koreas will enter the opening ceremony together and the two governments will field a single women's hockey team.  Even pop culture is playing a part in the easing of tensions - the lead singer of North Korea's biggest girl group is part of the North Korean advance delegation to the south to look over preparations for the Games.

It's nice to see a country at war with itself for decades make efforts at overcoming division.  The United States could learn something from the Koreans.

Please note that I did not mention the current White House occupant and his "role" in the Korea crisis in this blog post.