Apparently there's an actual reason for the deadline today on the infrastructure bill: I heard about it on the radio from Brooklyn Rep. and House Democratic Caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries, but the details came out in the Washington Post on Tuesday: it's the Federal Highway Administration, which funds road-building programs all over the country, and which isn't budgeted out of annual congressional appropriations but the Highway Trust Fund, usually from gas tax receipts, with an authorization from Congress for several years at a time that is running out, as it happens, tonight. The infrastructure bill, which the Senate passed back in August, reauthorizes the Highway Trust Fund (as well as adding many billions of dollars to the fund), and unless it's passed in the House and signed by the president by midnight, it shuts down, not exactly an emergency (projects have state funds that should generally keep them going) but inconvenient for some thousands of workers who could get furloughed. At the same time as the government itself would if they couldn't pass the continuing resolution today (but apparently that's now definitely happening).
Meanwhile, Manchin threw an interesting curveball yesterday, complaining that the Build Back Better plan is "fiscal insanity" and offering a somewhat more granular view of what he'd like to do instead:
