Democrats delay social bill, plan infrastructure vote

WASHINGTON » Top Democrats abruptly postponed an expected House vote Friday on a 10-year, $1.85 trillion social and environment measure, as leaders’ long struggle to balance demands from progressives and moderates once again dogged that pillar of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda.

In a bid to hand him a needed victory, leaders prepared to try pushing an accompanying $1 trillion package of road and other infrastructure projects through the chamber and to his desk.

With lawmakers set to leave town for a week’s break, House leaders’ scrambled plans cast a fresh pall over a party that has tried for weeks to find middle ground on its massive package of health, education, family and climatechange initiatives. That has been hard, in part because Democrats’ slender majorities mean they need the support of every Senate Democrat and no more than three defectors in the House.

Many had expected the House to approve both that measure and the infrastructure bill on Friday, producing twin triumphs for a president and party eager to rebound from this week’s deflating off-year elections, and show they can govern.

But those plans were dashed Friday when after hours of talks, a halfdozen moderates insisted they would vote against the sprawling social and climate bill unless the nonpartisan Congressional Budget office provides its cost estimate for the measure.

Democratic leaders said that would take days or more to receive. With Friday’s delay, that could mean the projection would be ready by the time the vote is held.

“In order to make progress on the president’s vision, it is important that we advance the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework and the Build Back Better Act today,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote to her colleagues, using the White House names for the two measures. “The agenda that we are advancing is transformative and historic, hence challenging.”

Biden makes push

Biden, meeting reporters to tout a strong monthly jobs report, said he was returning to the Oval Office “to make some calls” to lawmakers. He said he would ask them to “vote yes on both these bills right now.”

House passage of Biden’s larger measure would send it to the Senate, where it would face certain changes and more Democratic drama. That is chiefly because of demands by Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to contain the measure’s costs, and curb or drop some of its initiatives.

But House approval of the smaller, bipartisan infrastructure measure would send it directly to the White House, where Biden would be certain to take a victory lap. That bill, projected to create many jobs, had been blocked by House progressives to pressure moderates to back the larger family and climate-change legislation.

Pelosi met late Thursday with Latino lawmakers wanting the larger measure to go as far as possible in helping immigrants remain in the U.S. Their prospects for bold action are limited by strict Senate rules, though. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., said Friday that they had discussed moving on the issue in other bills and considered Pelosi an ally.

After months of negotiations, House passage of the big bill would be a crucial step, sending to the Senate Biden’s effort to expand health care, child care and other social services, and deliver a huge investment to fight climate change.

Alongside the slimmer roads-bridges-and-broadband package, it adds up to

Biden’s answer to his campaign promise to rebuild the country from the COVID-19 crisis, and confront a changing economy.

Pelosi’s strategy seemed focused on passing the most robust bill possible in her chamber, then leaving the Senate to adjust or strip out the portions its members won’t agree to. In late tweaks to the bill to nail down votes, the House Rules Committee approved revisions to a stateand-local tax deduction and other issues.

Half the size of Biden’s initial $3.5 trillion package, the bill exceeds 2,100 pages, and has support progressive lawmakers, even though it is smaller than they wanted. But the chamber’s more centrist and fiscally conservative Democrats continued to mount objections.