When Congress returns from recess next week, Democratic leaders hope to start one last run at major legislation to address climate change, health care costs and maybe one or two other needs.
They're not calling it "Build Back Better" anymore, or talking about Franklin D. Roosevelt-style transformations. At this point, the goal is merely to rescue a few of that legislation's components and package them into a much smaller bill. And even that could prove difficult.
They need to secure support from the likes of Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), each with their different sets of objections. They need to hold support from progressives, who had wanted to do so much more and already feel burned by the process. And they need to do all of this while President Joe Biden's approval ratings are in the tank, the public is angry about inflation and the nation is still dealing with COVID-19.
Still, the dire political circumstances should also give Democrats extra incentive to pass something. They need an accomplishment to show the voters in November, plus this might be their last chance to legislate in a long time.
And there's one particular piece of the old Build Back Better legislation whose political logic may be even stronger than it was a few months ago. At the same time, it'd represent a major policy achievement that, if not Rooseveltian in scale, could at least redefine the role of government in a way that could shape policy for generations.
I'm talking about the proposal to address prescription drug prices.
— Jonathan Cohn (tips, feedback jonathan.cohn@huffpost.com; Twitter @citizencohn)
