The House and Senate are both in recess this week, neither planning floor sessions. However, that doesn’t mean that they’re not working on the critical half of President Joe Biden’s big economic, climate change, and family agenda he’s calling Build Back Better (BBB). It’s the companion bill to the hard infrastructure bill that both the House and Senate have passed. Now that House Democrats have decided to trust Biden’s ability to bring recalcitrant Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema along and do it in the next three weeks, with the Thanksgiving holiday thrown in, the pressure is very much on. Because it’s not just BBB that has to be dealt with by Dec. 3. The conservative House Democrats who have been fighting that larger budget reconciliation bill agreed that they would allow for a vote on the package “no later than the week of Nov. 15.” So that’s the immediate job. There won’t be any time to rest if that achievement is met because Congress agreed to give themselves that Dec. 3 deadline for two rather important things: lifting or suspending the debt ceiling, and providing government funding for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2022 (we’re already almost a month and a half into it). Republicans are going to help with neither task. Which means it would make a lot of sense for Democrats to get one of those big must-pass things done as quickly as possible—they need to put the debt ceiling suspension in the budget reconciliation BBB bill, which will pass with only Democratic votes. Read more