Liberals ‘won’t back down’ in infrastructure bill melee, Japayal says

Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal drew another line in the sand Tuesday, saying she and her colleagues “won’t back down” to support the bipartisan infrastructure deal before an agreement on the Democrats’ larger social welfare reconciliation package is made.

Jayapal and other liberal Democrats have spent the last several days pumping the brakes on any plans to introduce the bipartisan bill first. Members have fired off multiple threats since Sunday when Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she would put the bipartisan bill up for a House vote on Thursday, citing the expiration of federal surface transportation funding on Sept. 30.

Pelosi also said the House was working with the Senate and White House to iron out differences on the larger partisan package but didn’t provide a timeline for a vote.

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“It’s not the infrastructure bill THEN maybe the Build Back Better package down the road. That wasn’t the deal,” Jayapal said in a tweet Tuesday night.

“Progressives won’t back down. We’re fighting the people’s fight and we’re going to deliver the entire Build Back Better agenda,” she added.

Jayapal suggested on CNN on Sunday morning, before Pelosi wrote to her colleagues about her plan for a Thursday vote, that she would accept a basic agreement on the reconciliation bill and support it without demanding a vote before the bipartisan bill. But, she stressed, “everything has to be done” on it first.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat and member of the 96-member Progressive Caucus, also pledged Tuesday that the bipartisan deal has no chance under the current plan.

“It will fail,” Schakowsky said following a meeting with fellow Democrats, pointing to an agreement reached in August to move the bipartisan and Democrat-only bills together.

Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, the lone senator in the Progressive Caucus, cheered on his counterparts.

“Let’s be crystal clear. If the bipartisan infrastructure bill is passed on its own on Thursday, this will be in violation of an agreement that was reached within the Democratic Caucus in Congress,” he wrote on Twitter.

Negotiations over the “Build Back Better” reconciliation package have been bumpy in recent weeks, with centrist Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia taking issue with the cost of the initial $3.5 trillion proposal. The two have said they won’t support a bill that spends that much, citing concerns it will add to already rising inflation.

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Beyond that, Manchin has taken issue with key parts of the Democratic proposals supporting President Joe Biden’s ambitious climate agenda, including proposed policies that would penalize the use of fossil fuels and pay utilities to use more clean electricity.