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BREAKING: Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN weighs in on Congress’ handling of the debt ceiling.

“In recent years Congress has addressed the debt limit through regular order, with broad bipartisan support,” Yellen said in a statement. “In fact, during the last administration, Democrats and Republicans came together to do their duty three times. Congress should do so again now by increasing or suspending the debt limit on a bipartisan basis.”

Backstory: Senate Republicans have urged Democrats to raise the debt limit via the forthcoming reconciliation bill, which can pass without GOP votes. Caitlin Emma and Jennifer Scholtes scooped last week that Democrats have no plans to do so. Until now the Biden administration hasn’t taken a position. Yellen’s statement is a clear sign that the reconciliation bill, which will be released later today, will not address the debt ceiling and that the two parties are headed toward a showdown, likely in late September, when Democrats may add a debt ceiling increase to a short-term funding measure needed to avert a government shutdown.

Threat of a government shutdown? Possibility of America defaulting on its loans? Dust off that Blackberry, fire off a manual RT, and put on some LMFAO. It’s feeling very 2011.

Welcome to Infrastructure Week! (Never gets old.)

The legislation formerly known as BIF — officially it’s the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act, but IIJA doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue — could pass the Senate today.

The bill experienced a delay that inconvenienced the weekend plans of senators because Sen. BILL HAGERTY, a Trump loyalist from Tennessee, refused to agree to speed up the process. If the delay tactics continue today, the vote won’t happen until about 3 a.m. Tuesday. (Read up on the latest here, via our dynamic, if exhausted, Senate duo Burgess Everett and Marianne Levine.)

The Hagerty move was an exception that proved a rule: DONALD TRUMP, who just this weekend the head of the RNC said “still leads the party,” had little influence over the process.

Good Monday morning. Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Tara Palmeri.

What else did we learn during BIF’s long and winding road to (seemingly imminent) passage? We pinged some of the people at the center of the deal in the Senate and White House for some lessons learned. Here are some of the key takeaways:

Trump: While it’s probably too much to say that the infrastructure bill is a repudiation of Trump, it might be seen as a kind of senatorial subtweet of him. The five Republicans who negotiated it are the five most anti-Trump GOP senators: ROB PORTMAN (Ohio), MITT ROMNEY (Utah), LISA MURKOWSKI (Alaska), SUSAN COLLINS (Maine) and BILL CASSIDY (La.). (All but Portman voted to convict Trump at his second Senate impeachment trial earlier this year.)

These are the GOP senators who have been the most vocal about Trump’s actions eroding democratic norms. The bill isn’t about Trump, but it was hard not to notice that those GOP senators most concerned about him were the ones who worked the hardest to show that a bipartisan democratic process was still possible.

On the other hand: Sen. TODD YOUNG (R-Ind.), who voted to advance the bill, announced Sunday night that he would vote against final passage. Young is up for reelection next year, and the late-inning attacks from the Trump right vis-a-vis the timing of his opposition did not seem like a coincidence. (He cited the CBO score.)

McConnell: Most observers predicted the minority leader would play a familiar role: chief obstructionist. Not only did MITCH MCCONNELL support the bipartisan talks behind the scenes, he voted to advance the bill. McConnell has clearly sided with the political argument Portman and other Republicans made on the Senate floor Sunday: The legislation is good on the merits, it could benefit the party to be seen as productive rather than purely obstructionist, and a worse version — from the GOP perspective — would have passed under reconciliation anyway.

The bipartisan deal may also hurt a top Democratic priority, or at least McConnell and his colleagues hope it will. “This obviously severely undercuts the narrative that the Senate is broken and that the filibuster should be eliminated,“ said a senior Senate GOP aide.

Sinema, Sinema, Sinema: The GOP praise for the Democratic senator from Arizona remains off the charts. While we were all paying perhaps a little too much attention to JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.), who is happy to talk to reporters each day as he strolls through Senate corridors, KYRSTEN SINEMA, who generally avoids us, was quietly pushing this giant boulder up the hill. One GOP aide closely involved in the talks noted that Sinema’s insistence on a bipartisan bill against the wishes of most of her Democratic colleagues helped convince them a deal was possible and, this person noted, allowed Republicans to have far more influence in the process than they had any right to expect. Did we mention they really like Sinema?

Schumer: Early in the process the majority leader, at least publicly, seemed unenthusiastic about the deal. CHUCK SCHUMER, as is common during the fifth year of his Senate terms, is hugging the left these days, and the left hated the BIF process. It was the Sinema-Biden mindmeld that forced BIF to happen in the Senate, and Schumer eventually shepherded the bill through adroitly, using a (failed) cloture vote to push things along when talks dragged, and opening the spigot of amendments just enough to neuter GOP criticism that the process wasn’t fair.

Still, we don’t see the G-22/G-10 process as likely to be a model for other significant legislation this Congress. Democrats noted that the most GOP-friendly portions of the Biden agenda are all in the infrastructure bill, and they are bristling over the delay tactics this weekend despite the supermajority in favor of the legislation. One Republican told us the G-10 staff is burned out and the committee chairs, which lost control of policymaking to the ad hoc group of senators, all want to “kill” the Portman- and Sinema-led group.

The senior GOP aide added, “Getting this done in the current political climate has been extraordinarily difficult. It took four months to get to this point. This deal nearly died a hundred times along the way, and partisan forces sought to undermine it.”

The White House: Would the White House have pursued this course absent Sinema’s (and Manchin’s) insistence on a bipartisan deal as a buffer between the party-line votes on the American Rescue Plan and the upcoming budget? Doubtful. But the West Wing’s view is that it was a victory for Biden-style prioritization and discipline. “We set a strategy — two bills — in April and stuck with it,” said a senior White House official. “We ignored the noise and the doubts and stuck with our plan.”

Added another top Biden adviser: “People continue to underestimate the president and his ability to get things done. This is the most popular initiative Congress can move on, even according to the DCCC polling.”

On the other hand: The bill still has a long road through the House to get to President JOE BIDEN’s desk.

The press: One of the most important lessons for the press in covering such a long and complicated negotiation is to refrain from viewing daily comments from the key players as determinative of the outcome. Most public statements are negotiating ploys meant to influence the final outcome rather than torpedoes designed to destroy the deal (at least the ones from good-faith actors who want to pass something). This is a good reminder as we move on to covering the much more sweeping and more complicated reconciliation bill. Sinema and BERNIE SANDERS and JOSH GOTTHEIMER and ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ are all already using their considerable leverage to stake out what might look like irreconcilable differences.

But don’t confuse attempts to shape legislation, which the White House and Democratic leaders will have to resolve, for a bill’s demise — especially when the president and his party’s future depend on it passing.

Speaking of which …

HOUSE DEMS’ UPHILL CLIMB: We’ve seen several memos floating around this month from political operatives analyzing the prospects for Dems to keep control of the House after the 2022 midterms. A top progressive strategist circulated an analysis Sunday night that caught our attention.

His state-by-state study of where things will stand after redistricting, which overall will benefit Republicans, laid out the math for Democrats by highlighting a few simple numbers:

195: the projected floor for House Democrats after the midterms.

232: the projected ceiling for House Democrats after the midterms.

37: the number of swing seats in 2022.

2/3: the percentage of those swing seats that Dems will need to win in order to retain their House majority.

Bonus statistic that tells you just how difficult this will be for the Dems:

“Democrats who won 51 percent of the adjusted two-party vote in 2020, will likely have to win between one and two points more in 2022 to retain control.”

WHICH IS WHY SOME DEMS ARE OBSESSING ABOUT THIS: Historically the number of seats lost by a president’s party in his first midterm election is closely correlated with the president’s job approval.

For months, Biden’s approval has been extraordinarily steady. But a few pollsters have detected a recent dip that is making Dems nervous. Even such a small change — and this one seems tied to the reemergence of the coronavirus pandemic — could have big consequences in 2022 given the tight margins in Congress.

CNN’s Harry Enten: “Throughout the first six months of Biden’s term, his approval rating always stood at between 51% and 55%. When it hit 51%, it quickly rebounded into the mid-50s. In fact, his approval rating averaged 53% during his first six months in office.

“Over the last few weeks, though, we’ve seen a number of polls come out where Biden’s at or tied for the lowest level of his presidency. … None of these polls or the average show a massive decline in Biden’s approval rating. Together, though, they seem to be telling a story that Biden’s approval rating has leaked a little bit. This wouldn't be a story if it weren’t for the fact that Biden’s approval rating has been so steady. The shift downward in the last few weeks is an illustration that events and time can move Biden’s numbers.”

BIDEN’S MONDAY — The president will remain in Wilmington, Del. Biden will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 10 a.m.

THE HOUSE and THE SENATE are out.

Four stories that jumped out at us this morning …

1. Just released: a landmark U.N. study on the effects of global warming. And unsurprisingly, it’s not pretty: “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.’ U.N. climate report warns of ‘code red for humanity,’” AP: “Earth’s climate is getting so hot that temperatures in about a decade will probably blow past a level of warming that world leaders have sought to prevent, according to a report released Monday that the United Nations calls a ‘code red for humanity.’ ‘It’s just guaranteed that it’s going to get worse,’ said report co-author LINDA MEARNS, a senior climate scientist at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. ‘I don’t see any area that is safe … Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.’

“But scientists also eased back a bit on the likelihood of the absolute worst climate catastrophes. The authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which calls climate change clearly human-caused and ‘unequivocal,’ makes more precise and warmer forecasts for the 21st century than it did last time it was issued in 2013.”

2. The Taliban is steamrolling into new territory as the end-of-month American pullout deadline creeps closer. That means maximum political pain for Biden, whose critics are being handed new evidence daily to bolster their case that he’s hastily abandoning the country. The NYT trio of Helene Cooper, Katie Rogers and Thomas Gibbons-Neff captures the situation in a story with a bluntly worded headline — “U.S. Response Sends Clear Message to Afghanistan: You’re on Your Own” — and a just-as-blunt opening few graphs: “If the Taliban had seized three provincial capitals in northern Afghanistan a year ago, like they did on Sunday, the American response would most likely have been ferocious. Fighter jets and helicopter gunships would have responded in force, beating back the Islamist group or, at the very least, stalling its advance.

“But these are different times. What aircraft the U.S. military could muster from hundreds of miles away struck a cache of weapons far from Kunduz, Taliqan or Sari-i-pol, the cities that already had been all but lost to the Taliban. The muted American response on Sunday showed in no uncertain terms that America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan is over. The mismanaged and exhausted Afghan forces will have to retake the cities on their own, or leave them to the Taliban for good.”

3. Who would have guessed that what once seemed like a progressive pipe dream — a $15-an-hour minimum wage — has largely taken root on its own? Yet here we are: “Wages have been rising rapidly as the economy reopens and businesses struggle to hire enough workers. Some of the biggest gains have gone to workers in some of the lowest-paying industries. Overall, nearly 80 percent of U.S. workers now earn at least $15 an hour, up from 60 percent in 2014,” write WaPo’s Andrew Van Dam and Heather Long.

“This higher pay is likely to be permanent as wages rarely fall once they move up. Economists caution that a higher average wage is not the same as a $15 minimum wage. … Nonetheless, rising pay is still a game-changer for millions of workers.”

4. We’d put the odds of an Ocasio-Cortez vs. Schumer primary next year at about 10 to 1, possibly longer. The Senate leader is doing everything he can to appease the left flank of the party, and AOC says they’re working well together. But keeping the possibility alive can only improve her leverage in Congress, and that’s precisely what she did in an interview with CNN that popped Sunday.

“‘I know it drives everybody nuts. But the way that I really feel about this, and the way that I really approach my politics and my political career is that I do not look at things and I do not set my course positionally,’ Ocasio-Cortez told [Dana] Bash in ‘Being…AOC,’ the first episode of the new CNN series ‘Being…’ that airs Monday night at 9 p.m. ET. ‘And I know there’s a lot of people who do not believe that. But I really — I can’t operate the way that I operate and do the things that I do in politics while trying to be aspiring to other things or calculating to other things,’ she said in an interview in her district in late June.”

MORE READS …

POLITICS CORNER

AUTHENTICITY WATCH — This is becoming a pattern. “J.D. Vance Converted to Trumpism. Will Ohio Republicans Buy It?” by NYT’s Trip Gabriel: “Today, as [J.D.] VANCE pursues the Republican nomination for an open Senate seat in Ohio, he has performed a whiplash-inducing conversion to Trumpism, in which he no longer emphasizes that white working-class problems are self-inflicted.”

THE SOCIAL NETWORK — “Zuckerberg’s cash fuels GOP suspicion and new election rules,” by AP’s Nicholas Riccardi

AS HER TIME IN THE W.H. WINDS DOWN — “How Anita Dunn got ‘to the table’ and has helped other women follow,” by CNN’s Dana Bash and Abbie Sharpe

CUOMO LATEST

HARD TO OVERSTATE THIS LOSS — “Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo’s top staffer, resigns,” by Anna Gronewold and Bill Mahoney in Albany: “It’s undoubtedly the most significant loss for the Cuomo administration, even at the end of a week in which the governor has been condemned by everybody from the president to the state legislators who now have the votes to impeach him. DeRosa has been widely viewed as [New York Gov. ANDREW] CUOMO’s most trusted adviser and gained national fame when she occupied the seat next to him at last year’s pandemic briefings.”

SPEAKING OUT — “Executive assistant who accused Cuomo of groping speaks publicly for the first time: ‘The governor needs to be held accountable,’” CBS: “BRITTANY COMMISSO is one of 11 women referenced in a scathing report from New York State Attorney General LETITIA JAMES … Until now, Commisso had remained anonymous, referred to only as ‘Executive Assistant #1’ in the report. Her full interview will air on ‘CBS This Morning’ on Monday.”

STATE OF PLAY — “Cuomo digs in, shows no sign of heeding calls to resign,” by AP’s Marina Villeneuve

PANDEMIC REPORT

A DEEP DIVE ON DELTA — “‘Goldilocks virus’: Delta vanquishes all variant rivals as scientists race to understand its tricks,” by WaPo’s Joel Achenbach, Carolyn Johnson, Lena Sun and Brittany Shammas: “The coronavirus pandemic in America has become a delta pandemic. By the end of July, it accounted for 93.4 percent of new infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The speed with which it dominated the pandemic has left scientists nervous about what the virus will do next. The variant battles of 2021 are part of a longer war, one that is far from over. …

“Epidemiologists had hoped getting 70 or 80 percent of the population vaccinated, in combination with immunity from natural infections, would bring the virus under control. But a more contagious virus means the vaccination target has to be much higher, perhaps in the range of 90 percent. Globally, that could take years. … ‘To see delta just running laps around these other strains is very concerning,’ said BENJAMIN NEUMAN, a virologist with Texas A&M University. ‘It’s like “Jurassic Park” the moment you realize the dinosaurs have all got loose again.’” Lots more here.

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

STILL NO CLOSER TO ANSWERS — “Mystery Attacks on Diplomats Leave Scores of Victims but Still Little Evidence,” by NYT’s David Sanger: “President Biden’s top aides were told on Friday that experts studying the mysterious illnesses affecting scores of diplomats, spies and their family members were still struggling to find evidence to back up the leading theory, that microwave attacks are being launched by Russian agents.

“The report came in an unusual, classified meeting called by the director of national intelligence, AVRIL D. HAINES, according to several senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”

CARLSON CENSORED … IN HUNGARY — via Brussels Playbook author Lili Bayer: Fox News’ TUCKER CARLSON may have come to Hungary with the expectation he’d be spending time with kindred spirits, but Hungarian officials ended up censoring the television host.

This is awkward: In an interview with Hungarian PM VIKTOR ORBÁN, Carlson posed a question where he referred to Chinese leader XI JINPING as having “murdered many of his political opponents.” That’s somewhat uncomfortable for Orbán, given he has nurtured close ties to Beijing. And so, when Hungary’s international comms office sent out a transcript of the interview on Friday, it omitted the reference to the Chinese leadership. The NYT’s Ben Novak pointed out the discrepancy — prompting officials to send out a second, real version of what was said.

The real Orbán: The episode highlighted an awkward reality for the conservative right: Orbán may appeal to them rhetorically, but his policies are often in deep contradiction with their values and priorities.

TRUMP CARDS

EYES EMOJI — Iowa Republican Party Chair JEFF KAUFMANN (@kaufmannGOP), at 8:58 p.m. Sunday: “Had a great 15 minute call from President Trump this evening. He asked about Iowa’s farmers and other topics including Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status.”

SPOTTED: Barack Obama having (hangover?) brunch at Beach Road in Vineyard Haven on Sunday, the morning after his birthday bash. (h/t Calla Walsh)

EVERY ROSE (GARDEN) HAS ITS THORNS — “Melania Trump Rips ‘Dishonorable’ Historian Over Criticism of Rose Garden Renovations,” Newsweek … “Evisceration of White House Rose Garden was completed a year ago this month, and here was the grim result—decades of American history made to disappear,” NBC’s Michael Beschloss tweeted.

@OfficeofMelania: “[email protected] has proven his ignorance by showing a picture of the Rose Garden in its infancy. The Rose Garden is graced with a healthy & colorful blossoming of roses. His misleading information is dishonorable & he should never be trusted as a professional historian.”

TRANSITIONS — David Concepcion is now director of media monitoring at America Rising. He previously was deputy war room director at the RNC. … Kendra Wood is now assistant chief clerk of debates in the House’s Office of the Clerk. She most recently was clerk for the House Science Committee. …

… John Hursh and Sevag Kechichian are joining Democracy for the Arab World Now. Hursh will be program director and previously was director of research at the Stockton Center for International Law. Kechichian will be Gulf researcher and previously was lead researcher on Saudi Arabia at Amnesty International. … Jourdan Lewis is now manager of government relations at Breakthrough Energy. She previously was senior policy adviser for Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.).

ENGAGED — Connor Flocks, a management consultant with Accenture Federal Services, proposed to Melissa Schlosberg, a 2L at GW law school, on Friday at the island at Constitution Gardens off the Mall. They met at a Christmas party in Dupont in 2018, thanks to overlapping Arkansas and Vanderbilt alumni friend groups in the city. Pic by Jordan Moya

WEEKEND WEDDING — Adam Morfeld, a Nebraska state senator and the executive director and founder of Civic Nebraska, and Rachel Ayalon, an assistant director of admissions at the University of Nebraska, got married Saturday. The couple, who met online, wed in the senator’s lounge of the Nebraska State Capitol surrounded by close friends and family. Pic

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) … CNN’s Chris Cuomo … NYT’s Julian Barnes and Ken Vogel … Lockheed Martin’s Marcel Lettre … Bill Burton … Ann Selzer of Selzer & Co. … Robin Pressman ... Kathleen Matthews ... Michael Fletcher … Hoda Kotb … Leila Sepehri Getto … SmartPower’s Brian F. Keane … Tim Tagaris … Isaac Lederman ... Facebook’s Robert Traynham ... Sharon Wagener … Christine Trippi … Brian Hart of LightHouse DC ... Kerry Troup … POLITICO’s Jordan Hoshko ... BBC’s John Simpson … David Sours … Fred Brown of Dezenhall Resources… New Deal Strategies’ Rebecca Kirszner Katz … Courtney Bradway of Cornerstone (28) … former Reps. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.) and Charles Djou (R-Hawaii) … Mike Mears … William Smith … Suzanne Elio … Gable Brady … Ryan Hampton … Karin Tanabe … Jamie Reno … Andrew Light … Mike Whatley … Catherine Tran … Eric Woolson … Rhonda Bentz Bozzella … Richard Weiblinger … Kate Leone … Lindsay Singleton of Rokk Solutions … Ann E.W. Stone … Chris Sautter … Virginia Pancoe … Connie Doebele

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