No Labels and our allies on Capitol Hill—particularly House Democrats—confront hard choices in the weeks before Congress is expected to adjourn for its summer recess at the end of July.

The good news: Over the weekend, President Biden walked back his threat to veto a bipartisan infrastructure bill unless it’s tied to a separate partisan reconciliation bill. The Republican senators in the G-21 group who felt “blindsided” by President Biden’s veto threat now appear back on board and passage of this bipartisan bill is still possible.

Much as they did with the December 2020 COVID bill, the Problem Solvers Caucus, and our Senate allies skillfully and tenaciously negotiated in good faith with the White House for weeks to come up with this bipartisan infrastructure agreement.

It’s an extraordinary accomplishment in these contentious times. Although we have so much work still to do, it is important to pause at least briefly, to applaud this major step in bipartisan legislating. 

The bad news: Publicly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to insist she will not send a bipartisan infrastructure bill to the president’s desk until she has also secured passage of a separate partisan multi-trillion dollar reconciliation bill. House Democrats will face significant pressure to support this strategy.

On the current trajectory, this dual-track approach—still at least tacitly supported by the administration and explicitly by Senate Majority Leader Schumer—will almost certainly lead to a bad legislative outcome with either nothing passing, or an entire Democratic-only bill being signed into law.

Speaker Pelosi has a lot of power in this process, including some lesser-known levers (such as passing a bill but not sending it to the president for his signature right away).

Although the fate of these parallel bills will play out over several months, the immediate priority for No Labels and for America is clear:

The infrastructure bill should rise and fall on its own, and No Labels’ congressional allies should support immediate passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill that is not conditioned on anything else.

Democratic congressional leadership is rolling the dice and taking on massive risks by refusing to simply pocket a win that in almost any administration in any era would be rightly seen as a defining achievement.

Through our messaging, tactics, and strategy, No Labels should continue to pursue four important goals at once:

1. Make the substantive and political case for the bipartisan infrastructure deal and continually drive a simple message: Take the win. Pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill now. 

2. Elevate our congressional allies in the public eye in order to give them more leverage for the fights ahead.

3. Develop alternative proposals for how Congress could spend the balance of 2021, racking up more bipartisan victories on key issues including policing, the Dreamers etc.

4. Calmly, rationally, and imaginatively explain both the substantive risks of spending another $4-6 trillion and the procedural risks of a reconciliation gambit that could leave the country with nothing. Democrats have tiebreaker control of a 50-50 Senate and the smallest House majority since World War I. What happens in the coming months if:

• A single Democratic senator falls ill or can’t vote?
• The competing priorities of progressive Democrats—who want $6 trillion in spending and big tax increases—simply can’t be reconciled with those of  moderates  worried about the deficit and Blue-state Democrats who want a tax cut in the form of  SALT repeal ?
• Congress simply runs out of time, as both the House and Senate are barely in session a third of the days through the fall even as they face a debt ceiling approaching and the need to pass 12 appropriations bills (none of which are even out of  committee  in either the House or Senate)?
• An unexpected external event—an economic shock, a COVID resurgence, a foreign policy crisis—diverts time and attention and drains momentum from negotiations?

The answer: Any of these developments could leave the country with no infrastructure bill and nothing but regret for what could have been if our leaders had just known when to take the win.

This is the time to be optimistic and strong. We won this last round for a variety of reasons and with a variety of methods. 

Let’s keep our success going.

The best way to keep winning is to keep winning.