House Speaker Nancy Pelosi again backed off from bringing up the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill on the House floor in the face of far-left opposition to voting on the legislation before an agreement is reached on a separate social spending bill.
“As you know by now, the House will postpone the vote on the BIF [bipartisan infrastructure framework],” Pelosi told colleagues in a letter Thursday night. “The good news is that most Members who were not prepared for a yes vote today have expressed their commitment to support the BIF.”
House Democratic leadership had hoped to vote on the infrastructure bill, which has already passed the Senate with bipartisan support, this week before President Joe Biden left for a G-20 summit of leaders of the world’s wealthiest nations and the COP26, a United Nations climate change conference. There was also an Oct. 31 expiration deadline for some highway transportation funding programs that would be funded in the bipartisan bill.
President Joe Biden traveled to Capitol Hill to speak with House Democrats on Thursday to sell a $1.75 trillion spending bill framework, down from an original $3.5 trillion price tag.
PELOSI TRIES TO PUSH PASSAGE OF INFRASTRUCTURE BILL OVER FINISH LINE DESPITE DEMOCRATIC GRUMBLING
Pelosi reportedly told Democrats in a caucus meeting on Thursday that she wanted to pass the infrastructure bill before Biden landed in Rome on Thursday. She told reporters that she wanted to bring the bill up in a “timely fashion” but ignored a question on whether she would bring a bill for a vote on Thursday.
“Let’s do it in a timely fashion,” Pelosi told reporters. “Let’s not just keep having postponements and leaving any doubt as to when this will happen.”
But members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by Washington Democratic Rep. Pramilla Jayapal, have long said that they would not vote for the infrastructure bill until the Build Back Better Act spending bill gets a vote in the Senate or that the two bills get back-to-back votes in the House.
Pelosi was unable to convince progressives. In today’s razor-thin majority, she has only three Democratic votes to spare before needing support from House Republicans, who are whipping against the bill.
“I have signaled for days that you simply did not have the votes for the bipartisan bill without the other bill, the Build Beck Better Act, which has 85% of the President’s agenda that we really care deeply about,” Jayapal told CNN on Thursday.
Key hurdles to Pelosi and Biden securing support from progressives is that the legislation text, though some of it was released on Thursday, is far from complete; and disagreements among senators about what should be in the legislation remain.
Democrats aim to pass through a special reconciliation process that bypasses the need to gain any Republican support in the Senate, but Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin have been key Democratic holdouts on the bill, and it can’t pass with both of their support.
Instead of the infrastructure bill, the House on Thursday passed a temporary extension of the highway programs funding until Dec. 3.
The situation mirrored that of a month ago when Pelosi had put a vote on the infrastructure bill on the calendar but then delayed it in a late-night vote. Biden came to the Capitol to meet with the House Democratic Caucus the next day, and then members passed an extension of the highway programs until Oct. 31, buying them time to work on the reconciliation bill.
Since then, centrist and progressive Democrats in the House and Senate have engaged in much more productive negotiations, and the progressives have agreed to support the $1.75 trillion framework despite initially demanding a $3.5 trillion package.
“I feel very, very positive. We are so much further than we were three-and-a-half weeks ago,” Jayapal told the press pool Thursday evening.
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The progressives’ firm stance and forced delays have frustrated some Democrats, though.
“It’s very disappointing,” centrist California Rep. Jim Costa told the hill press pool. “Not to trust the president of the United States and the speaker says a lot about the individuals who decided that … their own agenda was more important than our working together.”
