Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has decided to brush aside the effort by Sen. Joe Manchin to derail the reconciliation package Congress has been focused on for months and keep moving. She told reporters Tuesday that they will try to get the bill to the Rules Committee on Wednesday, to prepare it to go to the floor for a final vote on Thursday. That would put the House on track to potentially pass both the bipartisan hard infrastructure bill that the Senate has already passed (let’s keep calling it BIF), and the large domestic spending bill that comprises President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB). The BBB would still need to pass in the Senate, where it needs every Democratic vote, but is not subject to the filibuster, so Democrats can do it on their own. The issues that are still outstanding, Pelosi told members in a closed meeting Tuesday, are climate, prescription drugs, and immigration. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is fine with votes this week on both of the bills. Whether that can actually happen is questionable, because the remaining issues are thorny politically, with Manchin still bigfooting his way around, stomping good ideas down. Read more