House Democrats push dozens of ‘common sense’ bills with bipartisan buy-in

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN

Frantic to show voters they’ve accomplished more ahead of the November midterm elections, a small group of House Democrats is circulating what it calls a “common sense” agenda of 77 bills they say could quickly head to President Joe Biden’s desk, all with tangible impacts on key issues.

Deliberately, the bills mostly fall under a few key headings they’re calling the “three C’s”: costs, crime and Covid-19. The ideas are being shared with senior White House aides and members of the House Democratic leadership, ahead of Biden’s State of the Union address next week and the House Democrats’ policy retreat in Philadelphia in mid-March.

Among the ideas in the bills, according to a draft of the agenda obtained by CNN: creating a global supply chain czar, capping the price of insulin, enabling refinancing of student loans, funding free breakfasts and lunches for public school students, sending more resources to prosecutors and law enforcement technology, building up preparedness in schools in case of future pandemics and expanding Medicare to include vision, dental and hearing coverage. There’s a Veterans Suicide Prevention Act, Hamas International Financing Prevention Act and an Illicit Arms Trafficking Security Enforcement Act. They want to both invest in tough border protections and provide recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program with a pathway to citizenship.

All are drawn from bills introduced with at least one Republican and one Democratic co-sponsor. Together, they represent an effort to move their colleagues away from trying to resurrect attempts to pass Biden’s Build Back Better bill — which has, as a whole and in most of its parts, been vetoed by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

They’re also trying to counter the sense that Democrats have failed to pass anything, with the White House and allies in Congress still stymied in figuring out how to get voters to connect with their passing both the Covid relief package and the bipartisan infrastructure bill last year.

“There’s a real disconnect now between do we do everything huge or do we go for some singles and doubles,” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat who’s been one of the main agitators for the effort, along with fellow Reps. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Steve Horsford of Nevada and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan — more moderate members from competitive districts.

A number of House Democrats are also wary of the current push to unionize congressional staffers on Capitol Hill. Though many support the idea, they worry about that debate overtaking attention to legislating.

“We need to focus on issues important to what the families we represent are dealing with — gas, groceries and utility bills — not on internal procedures,” Gottheimer said.

That divide between pushing for bigger aspirations that do not currently have the votes to pass Congress and reverting to less ambitious and less transformative goals with wider support is one of the biggest among Democrats on Capitol Hill at the moment. On Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan announced on Twitter that she would give a response to the State of the Union next week “supporting President Biden and his Build Back Better agenda.”

Gottheimer said their agenda is “a common conversation many of us have been having with each other, based on what we’ve been hearing from our constituents.”

Tlaib, though, said in her announcement that’s exactly what she’ll be doing, promising to tell the story of a woman in her district who benefited from the Child Tax Credit, which provided several hundred dollars each month to millions of families but expired at the end of the 2021, with Manchin torpedoing hopes for its renewal and extension.

“It does not preclude us from taking elements of it on which we might find common ground,” Phillips said, but “we’re tired of the nonsense and the discord, and we thought at least some voices of reason should speak up.”

Phillips pointed to one of his own bills included in the agenda: the Porch Pirates Act, which would make stealing packages from homes a federal offense if the deliveries are made by FedEx, UPS or other private carriers in the same way it is if the deliveries are made by the Postal Service.

“It’s a simple example of something that bothers everybody in America,” he said, calling the bill and the others included, “singular, skinny, easy to understand measures that people are asking for.”

Their plan is to build support among colleagues, in the hopes that this will create pressure on leadership to take up the bills. But other Democrats on the Hill dismiss the chances for the agenda, skeptical that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, would let his members support giving Democrats more wins in a midterm year, even for bills with Republican sponsors. And they’d also need to pass the Senate, which means any of them could be stopped by filibusters.

“If people are serious about legislating,” Phillips said, “they’ve already put their names on bills. Here’s a chance.”

Margaret Mulkerrin, the communications director for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, said the Maryland Democrat hadn’t seen the group’s agenda yet but “looks forward to reviewing the list of legislation and discussing it with the caucus in the weeks ahead.”

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