Remember the game being played here with Biden: Good cop/bad cop. Biden’s the good cop who wants a compromise with Republicans and will sign whatever comes to his desk. Pelosi’s the bad cop who won’t take up a bipartisan roads-and-bridges bill unless she also gets a blockbuster social-welfare bill via reconciliation too. That’s the one progressives really want, after all. “Linking” the bills is a way of pressuring Joe Manchin to go big on the “human infrastructure” reconciliation bill, knowing that the bipartisan deal he’s so proud of will be flushed down the toilet in the House if he doesn’t.

The problem with the good cop/bad cop routine for Democrats is that the president is a little slow and forgot last week that he’s supposed to be playing the good cop. His team spent the weekend cleaning up his mistake, restoring to him a position of formal neutrality on whether the bills should be linked or not. (“It was a f***ing clown show,” said one House Dem to The Hill about Biden’s error.) Mitch McConnell tried to counter that move by demanding yesterday that Biden convince Pelosi to delink the bills. That way, when she refuses, Republicans still get to blame Biden for her refusal.

As expected, she’s refusing. She reportedly told her caucus this afternoon that she’ll continue to insist that the bills be linked. Pelosi’s not giving up her bad-cop role just because McConnell’s using it against Biden.

“What the Speaker has said, and I totally agree with her, is that we’re not going to vote on one until the Senate sends us both,” Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, told reporters after the meeting. “That’s not changed.”…

Pelosi … is standing her ground, supporting the liberals in her caucus who are wary that enacting the smaller infrastructure bill — which the Senate is shooting to pass before the August recess — would erode the momentum behind the larger partisan package, which Democrats intend to pass by reconciliation.

The liberals are demanding that the Senate pass the second measure before the House votes on either, and leadership appears to be well on board.

Two questions now. How will Senate Republicans react? Will they continue to play along with the good cop/bad cop routine? Lindsey Graham was furious a few days ago after Biden said he wouldn’t sign a bipartisan bill unless it came packaged with a reconciliation bill, a plan Graham called “extortion.” Biden has now walked that back — but it doesn’t matter if the House won’t send him a bill to sign until it can send both. If the Senate GOP continues to support the bipartisan bill under those circumstances, they’re complicit in the extortion. They’re simply allowing themselves to be extorted by Pelosi instead of Pelosi and Biden.

The other question is whether Pelosi can get the leftists in her caucus on the same page as the moderates. “The linkage is non-negotiable for me,” Ritchie Torres, a freshman progressive, has said. “I will refuse to vote for any bill that fails to be linked to a larger reconciliation bill.” But some centrist Dems are pissed at the thought of having to wait on a bipartisan bill until a reconciliation bill passes as well:

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) reportedly said the bipartisan infrastructure deal was historic on its own and “something we should celebrate by getting it passed as quickly as possible. … I don’t think we should hold our infrastructure hostage.”

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) said, “I think it’d be incredibly disappointing if there’s a bill from the Senate, waiting for our action, and we choose to delay it arbitrarily.”

Rep. Ed Case (D-HI) said, “I do have concerns,” when asked about Pelosi’s plan. “I think that … a bill that can actually pass Congress and get to the President’s desk — I want to pass that. And so I want to strike while the iron is hot.” When he was asked if he was concerned that effectively tying the two together could kill both efforts, he said: “I am concerned about that.”

Dean Phillips, another centrist Democrat, also opposes linking the bills, telling CNN that he wants to show that Congress can operate by passing them sequentially. If the left wants to take up the bills together and the moderates want to take them up in order, something’s got to give. Is Pelosi sure she has 218 votes to do this?

I posted this earlier but it’s worth another reminder. The Decider has declared that he *will* take up a reconciliation bill but that he doesn’t think the bills should be linked. Hmmmm.

Sen. Joe Manchin supports a Democratic-only reconciliation bill on infrastructure, which means that Republican hopes of stopping the Biden agenda have been likely dashed. pic.twitter.com/6fTABwzMI7

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) June 29, 2021

I don’t understand why centrist House Dems are anxious about the bills being linked. The idea, I guess, is that if they’re delinked then centrists will have more leverage to object to the reconciliation bill. Once the bipartisan roads-and-bridges bill is safely passed, they can drive a hard bargain about the soft “human infrastructure” spending. But if the bills are a package deal then driving a hard bargain on the reconciliation stuff will cause lefties to drive a hard bargain on roads and bridges. The moderates want to bank a win on the bipartisan bill so that they don’t end up in a position of having to either support a bad linked package for partisan reasons or to tank a popular linked package for spending reasons.

One other thing I don’t quite get is how any of this is supposed to pressure Manchin. He’s said repeatedly that he’ll pursue reconciliation for social welfare spending. He’s also said that the price tag won’t be anywhere near $6 trillion and lefties should make peace with that. Why does he care particularly whether the bills are linked or not? I assume that he doesn’t but that he fears linking them will end up scaring off Republicans, even with Biden back to a position of neutrality. The only way to get a bipartisan bill and a reconciliation bill to pass Congress may be to do them in sequence and trust Manchin not to betray the left. But Pelosi and her caucus aren’t willing to do that. Yet.

Here’s AOC speaking for House lefties.

.@RepAOC: "The Senate doesn't run the show. The Senate doesn't tell the White House what to do, the Senate doesn't tell the House what to do… if the Senate really wants to run with their bipartisan bill… then they should give on reconciliation." pic.twitter.com/k0R8FAhU86

— The Hill (@thehill) June 29, 2021