Where have we heard a pledge from Nancy Pelosi on floor votes before? Ah yes … on Build Back Better, Joe Biden’s big plan to overstimulate the economy even further and create another massive monetary expansion. When Biden started whittling it down, House progressives kept throwing sand in the machinery — until the only thing Pelosi could actually get passed into law was a compromise that reduced the overall funding by over 80%.

Progressives loudly complained about being betrayed in that sequence. Want to bet how they’ll feel about imposing a contract on workers who want paid sick time off? Nancy Pelosi promises we’ll find out as soon as tomorrow morning at 9 am ET:

Schumer: "It was a productive meeting…All four of us agreed we’ve got to resolve this rail shutdown as quickly as possible."

Pelosi: "If we don’t have an option we may have to have a year-long CR…to avoid the rail strike…tomorrow morning we will have a bill on the floor." pic.twitter.com/bnyL0cP58q

— CSPAN (@cspan) November 29, 2022

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday the House will vote Wednesday on legislation to avert a railroad strike that threats to add to supply chains problems that have already hurt the U.S. economy.

Pelosi spoke at the White House alongside Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, after Congress’ top two Democrats met with President Biden. …

“It’s not everything I would like to see,” she said. “I think we should have paid sick leave.”

Four of the labor unions involved in the negotiations in recent weeks rejected the deal.

The final House vote Wednesday will come as early as 9 a.m., Pelosi announced.

Union blowback to come, apparently. Pelosi acknowledged this and tried to finesse it by claiming that some unreported “negotiations” by Biden and his Labor Department had resulted in additional concessions. Pelosi then goes on to admit that the new deal doesn’t deliver on the specific demand that workers wanted and why they rejected Biden’s deal — a lack of paid sick days, as well as more predictable scheduling.

The Hill updates us with warnings about reaction from rail workers and their leadership in the four unions that rejected Joe Biden’s deal, even as Pelosi and Chuck Schumer plan to take ownership of it. They’re unhappy that Congress is coming down on the side of management, while shipping interests corroborate Schumer’s statement that a strike would effectively begin its impact a week in advance:

The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division, one of the rail unions that saw its workers vote down a contract proposal, said Tuesday that it was “deeply disappointed” by Biden’s decision, noting that the tentative deal doesn’t provide any paid sick days.

“A call to Congress to act immediately to pass legislation that adopts tentative agreements that exclude paid sick leave ignores the railroad workers’ concerns. It both denies railroad workers their right to strike while also denying them of the benefit they would likely otherwise obtain if they were not denied their right to strike,” the union said in a statement. …

Hundreds of influential trade associations are lobbying lawmakers to stave off a strike long before the Dec. 9 deadline. Amtrak suspended several routes in September as railroads closed down some lines about a week before a threatened strike date.

“For us, a strike effectively starts this weekend,” Corey Rosenbusch, president of the Fertilizer Institute, told reporters Tuesday, referring to shipments of fertilizer and other chemicals that would be the first to be shut down for safety reasons.

The Association of American Railroads, which estimates that a strike would cost the U.S. economy $2 billion per day, released a poll this week showing that 72 percent of Americans want Congress to step in to ensure rail service continues.

As I wrote earlier, however, passing this before the weekend may be easier said than done — and not just in the Senate, either. Schumer gave Mitch McConnell credit for supporting the deal and the bill imposing it, but neither man can be assured of enough votes to succeed. Bernie Sanders has already balked at the terms of this deal, repeatedly and publicly, and Sanders carries a lot of weight among Senate progressives. Marco Rubio staked out the working-class hero position in McConnell’s caucus, and won’t be the last to do so. It will take 60 votes at some point to get this bill passed.

But what about the House? Pramila Jayapal has yet to weigh in on imposing a contract on unions whose workers explicitly rejected it, and it’s tough to see how any chair of a House Progressive Caucus would sign onto a diktat on behalf of management. Jayapal claims to have 99 House Democrats in her group. If she balks at this bill, can Pelosi get 99 Republicans to replace them? Even in a lame-duck Congress, that seems unlikely — at least not without a lot of horse-trading that would all but gut Pelosi’s plans to use the lame duck for her own agenda.

The obvious solution would be to pass a different form of the deal that includes paid sick leave and trims other gains for workers. That, however, would almost certainly lose every Republican in both chambers for overriding the negotiating process that created the deal that’s on the table now. It would also make Biden look impotent. Pelosi more or less signaled today that she doesn’t want to go out any farther on the limb than where Biden already put her.

If I had to place a bet, I’d guess on some sort of deal that gets a bill passed by Friday afternoon. But Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden will have to cough up some concessions to make it work — not for workers, but for Republicans. Perhaps an agreement to adjourn after passing an omnibus for the remainder of the fiscal year would do it, shutting down the lame-duck session before Pelosi and Schumer can conduct any more mischief.

Update: The working draft bill just dropped. It imposes the Biden deal with no changes.

Here’s draft of the joint resolution circulating on the Hill directing the two sides to implement earlier deal to avert strike. Unclear if there will be changes to this version before House votes tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/boG18hZVUt

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 29, 2022