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Indivisibles,

Last night, the House passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF)
and took a step towards passage of the Build Back Better Act (BBB). 

These two bills together make up the Biden economic agenda. At
Indivisible, we’ve been focused on the passage of Build Back Better,
because it includes our key priorities - from climate investments to child
care and paid leave to prescription drug reform. 

Until now, these two bills have been linked, for a simple reason:
progressives care more about Build Back Better, and conservatives care
more about the BIF. For the last two months, progressives have acted as a
bloc to withhold their votes from the infrastructure package in order to
protect against the danger that conservatives simply walk away from Build
Back Better.

This standoff has succeeded in bringing conservative democrats to the
table to hammer out the framework and details of a Build Back Better
package. This in itself was a victory; earlier in the fall, Senator
Manchin was openly calling for a “strategic pause” until next year on
Build Back Better. The organizing of the progressive caucus prevented that
from happening, and forced conservatives to actually negotiate. We’ve made
a ton of progress in the last two months - enough to get to a House bill
with legislative text this week.

Yesterday, we hoped to pass both the BIF and BBB together out of the
House. But a last-minute revolt by a small group of conservative holdouts
— Reps. Ed Case (HI-01), Jared Golden (ME-02), Stephanie Murphy (FL-07),
Kathleen Rice (NY-04), Kurt Schrader (OR-05), and Abigail Spanberger
(VA-07) — derailed that plan. Despite having scores from the Joint Tax
Committee and the White House, the conservatives refused to vote on the
bill without first receiving a formal score (ie, estimate of its impact on
the federal budget) from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) — a score
that wouldn’t be ready until next week.

After a day of fraught, intense negotiations, progressives led by Rep.
Jayapal made the decision to accept a commitment from these conservative
holdout Democrats that they’d vote for Build Back Better once the CBO
score was received, and move forward with passing the BIF in the meantime.
This deal gave President Biden a win while securing the public commitments
of the holdouts on the current version.

Now let’s be real: commitments on paper, or at a press conference, are
better than no commitments at all. But they’re not nearly as ironclad a
guarantee as a vote. The progressives who took this deal are recognizing
the urgent need to give President Biden a win and taking a leap of faith.
It’s now up to the conservative democrats, Democratic leadership, and
President Biden to deliver. And we’re going to do everything we can to
make sure they uphold their end of the bargain.

It’s also important to note that other progressives, including fellow
champions and friends of ours, held to their original strategy and voted
no on the BIF. This was a courageous stance, and one that we honor and
support. Because let’s be clear: it’s absolutely outrageous that corporate
conservative Democrats were once again allowed to delay Build Back Better.
It’s outrageous that once again progressives were the ones asked to take
the leap of faith, instead. 

Let’s also be clear about one more thing: the only reason we’re in this
position at all is because literally zero members of the Republican party
are willing to vote for climate action, healthcare, childcare, paid leave,
affordable housing, or prescription drug reform. These are wildly popular
policies, things their own voters also want - and they’re trying to kill
it all.

So here’s the short version of what’s happened: at this point, all but one
member of the House (Rep. Golden) has committed to vote for Build Back
Better — that’s enough votes for passage. President Biden has repeatedly
committed that he’ll get it across the finish line. Here at Indivisible,
we ultimately care about what people do, not what they say. So we’re going
to be throwing everything we’ve got at making sure they uphold their word
and pass this bill into law. Our families, our communities, and our planet
depend on it. 

So, this is what we need you to do right now (you can connect to your
representatives via the United States Capitol switchboard at (202)
224-3121):

 1. If your representative is one of the conservative Democrats, hold them
to their word and [ [link removed] ]demand that they vote yes on the Build Back
Better Act when it comes to the floor. 
 2. If your representative is one of the Democrats working hard to get
Build Back Better over the finish line, thank them and tell them to
keep it up.
 3. If your representative is a Republican, remind them that the
provisions in the Build Back Better Act are [ [link removed] ]wildly popular across
bipartisan lines — and that as a constituent, you demand that they
vote yes.

We know this has been a long fight, and it’s felt like just one of many
long fights over a long year. We know how ready you are for a victory (us
too). Thank you for staying with us, and pushing on against every obstacle
we’ve faced so far. What we can accomplish together in the coming days
will help get us one step closer to the finish line.

In Solidarity,
Leah Greenberg
Co-Executive Director

P.S. I know our inbox, so I know we’re going to get a bunch of questions.
But there’s one that I want to address directly: why aren’t you talking
about how great the infrastructure bill is?

Quite honestly, our opinion on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill depends
a lot on what happens next! The BIF’s got some very good stuff in it -
funding for public transit and passenger rail, lead removal, green energy,
and more. It’s also got some stuff we don’t love. Our concern with the BIF
has never been about the BIF; it’s been that conservative democrats might
declare themselves done with legislating once it’s passed. If BIF is
accompanied by the game-changing policies in Build Back Better, then we’ve
got a historic Biden legislative agenda. That’s the ‘if’ we’ve got to
fight for right now.

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