Hi Friend,

In the wake of the House infrastructure vote being pulled at the last minute — again — four things seem clear.  

1. Hostage-taking is Being Rewarded: A decade ago, most commentators correctly denounced Tea Party members of Congress for holding hostage spending bills and the debt ceiling to try to force action on their completely unrelated partisan priorities. Now, the progressives are doing the same thing by linking the fate of an infrastructure bill for a totally separate social spending and climate bill, and are being rewarded for it. 
    
2. Leaders are Not Keeping Their Word: “I am committing to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill by September 27. I do so with a commitment to rally House Democratic support for its passage,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, August 24. 
    
3. President Biden Has Done Little to Pass His Own Bill: Despite barnstorming the country this summer touting the historic nature of the bill, the President has twice gone to Capitol Hill to address the Democratic House caucus, and twice he has failed to ask for immediate passage of his own infrastructure bill. 
    
4. The Reconciliation “Process” is a Rush Job: Four years ago, President Trump and a narrow Republican congressional majority rammed through a partisan tax cut package by reconciliation. Months later, Americans learned the bill was “riddled with drafting errors, special tax breaks that were not vetted, and new loopholes.” Now, the exact same thing is happening again. The New York Times just reported: “Democrats are attempting to rewrite the United States tax code in a matter of days, proposing the kind of sweeping changes to how America taxes businesses and individuals that would normally take months or years to enact.” 
   
   We are outraged by this behavior.  If the media fairly and fully covered these developments, we are confident a large majority of the American people would be, too. This is no way to govern a country. 
   
   No Labels is reviewing what’s in this emerging 2,700+ page, one-party reconciliation bill before we recommend action. Sign up for No Labels View, our weekday morning email with a quick rundown of all the biggest political news from a No Labels perspective, to be the first to know more as we read the bill.