Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty

But even if the House’s BBB skeptics decide to vote for the bill, there is another force at work: the relentless march of time. As CNN reported this week, the CBO initially stated that it couldn’t predict when it would be able to release its conclusions on the bill. Since then, though, it’s given lawmakers something to work with, releasing some preliminary estimates. But a complete take from Washington’s budget metaphysicians remains elusive, jeopardizing the hoped-for November 15 vote.

There could be other delays, too. Should the agency’s analysis cause more consternation, House Democrats will have to spend additional time in negotiations. Further reporting from Politico suggests that Senate Democrats are also very antsy about the need to pass a long-delayed defense spending bill ahead of the BBB. And in early December, Democrats will once again have to resolve the debt ceiling to prevent economic calamity. All of these factors threaten to push the BBB close to 2022, when lawmakers go into midterm mode and get real, real skittish about passing major legislation.

Still, Democrats have been facing these deadline challenges all along and are resolved to get the BBB out of the House and send it back to the Senate, where—oh, snap!—Joe Manchin awaits. The West Virginia senator, who is icy toward a bill that stands to help his constituents, hasn’t made any pledge to pass the BBB. Now that he’s got the version of the infrastructure bill he wanted (and which he stands to profit from personally) enacted, Democrats no longer have any meaningful leverage over him. And Manchin, who had taken the view that there ought to be a “pause” on further spending, has new concerns about inflation.

There is also, of course, another senator to consider: Kyrsten Sinema, who is not so much a “lawmaker” as an agent of chaos with inscrutable motivations. Sinema has at least expressed support for the recently included immigration measures stuffed into the BBB—good news, provided those policies survive the Senate parliamentarian’s red pen. However, the larger problem, as The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky noted, is that neither Sinema nor Manchin seems to believe that their political fate is tied to the success of Biden’s agenda or his presidency.

Could be a problem in convincing them to budge on, well, anything!

Nevertheless, there remains a path to the successful passage of the Build Back Better Act. As long as (deep breath), House holdouts stick to their unenforceable pledge, the CBO doesn’t throw a spanner in the works, the Democrats sort out their impressively daunting honey-do list in a timely fashion, and Manchin and Sinema become unbeguiled from whatever political considerations currently entrance them, the Biden agenda will sail into being, and then all we’ll have to worry about is … well, you know—the failure to pass a voting rights bill and a hostile Supreme Court.

—Jason Linkins, deputy editor

From Atop The Soapbox

This week in The Soapbox, we round up the passage of the infrastructure bill and declare the winners and losers. In other news, mainstream Democrats and Trumpian Republicans finally found a project they can work on together, and it’s stopping Buffalo mayoral candidate India Walton from holding office, writes Raina Lipsitz. New January 6 commission subpoenas just dropped, and Daniel Strauss digs into one that seems like the pick of the litter. Matt Ford has the incredibly true story of an FBI informant who turned on the Feds who asked him to infiltrate the Orange County, California, Muslim community. Natalie Shure says that the Democratic Party’s future lies far from Washington. Elsewhere, New Hampshire man declines terrible job. And Ted Cruz stars in the new season of Secession. Reactionary Substack luminaries launch Debate Me, Coward, University. The Supreme Court found a religious freedom plaintiff it didn’t like. And Tim Noah and Abdul El-Sayed tag-team Joe Manchin.

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