House delays vote on infrastructure bill
WASHINGTON — With President Joe Biden’s government overhaul at risk, Democrats confronted high-stakes trouble Thursday as a promised vote on the first piece, a slimmer $1 trillion public works bill, faltered and was delayed as negotiations stretched late into the night. Action was set to resume Friday.
White House officials and Democratic lawmakers huddled late into the night to try to break the political logjam. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was meeting privately with factions of lawmakers and Biden cleared his schedule to work the phones.
Democrats are deeply at odds as progressive lawmakers threatened to withhold votes on the roads-and-bridges infrastructure bill they view as insufficient unless it is paired with Biden’s broader $3.5 trillion vision. In the narrowly controlled House, Pelosi has no votes to spare.
“Step by step,” Pelosi said at the Capitol, suggesting a deal was within reach.
“This is the path — it’s not a fork in the road,” she said. “This is the fun part.”
Biden’s idea is to essentially raise taxes on corporations earning more than $5 million a year and wealthy individuals who earn-more than $400,000 a year, or $450,000 for couples, and use that money to expand government health care, education and other programs — an impact that would be felt across countless American lives.
Democrats raced to broker an agreement with two moderates — Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. — who have sought to cut down the size of Democrats’ second package.
“I don’t see a deal tonight. I really don’t,” Manchin told reporters as he left the Capitol.
Manchin emerged from the lengthy gathering shortly before 10 p.m. sticking to his initial position that the tax-and-spend measure should be less than half the overall price tag.
“I’m willing to sit down and work on the $1.5 (trillion),” Manchin told reporters earlier Thursday.
Pelosi, however, for hours had refused to back down. “It has been a day of progress in fulfilling the President’s vision to Build Back Better,” she told Democrats in a late-night letter.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki released a statement saying: “A great deal of progress has been made this week, and we are closer to an agreement than ever. But we are not there yet, and so, we will need some additional time to finish the work, starting tomorrow morning first thing.”
The public works bill — a $1 trillion investment in routine transportation, broadband, water systems and other projects — has won broad, bipartisan support in the Senate but has now become snared by the broader debate.
Attention remains squarely focused on Manchin and Sinema, who have infuriated colleagues by not making any counterproposals public.
Sinema was working to stave off criticism, and her office said claims that she has not been forthcoming are “false” — though she has not publicly disclosed her views and has declined to answer questions about her position.
The centrist senators’ refusal to bring negotiations with Biden to a close enraged progressive lawmakers and almost ensured they would tank the bipartisan public works bill.
The chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, said while leaving Pelosi’s office that the progressives won’t vote for one bill without the other.
“We’re gonna stay here all weekend if we need to to see if we can get to a deal,” she said.
In a deepening party split, centrists warned off canceling Thursday’s vote as a “breach of trust that would slow the momentum in moving forward in delivering the Biden agenda,” said Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., a leader of the centrist Blue Dog Democrats.
With Republicans lockstep opposed to the president’s big plan, deriding it as slide to socialist-style spending, Biden as been hunkered down at the White House reaching for a deal with members of his own party for a signature legislative accomplishment.