House OKs budget blueprint

Move tees up infrastructure bill vote for September

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House voted along party lines to pass a budget resolution Tuesday that could unleash as much as $3.5 trillion in social spending on climate change, education, health care and overhaul the nation’s tax laws.

The vote was 220 to 212, with U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, and U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon, joining all House Democrats in supporting the budget resolution. All Pennsylvania Republicans were unified against it.

The resolution sets a spending limit that now allows Democrats in Congress to pursue a bill without any Republican support. Committees will begin working on specific funding amounts.

The passage came after House Democratic leadership struck a deal with a group of 11 moderate Democrats who had demanded an immediate vote on a separate, $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. The moderates portrayed their party’s strategy to pass both measures together as holding the bipartisan bill “hostage.”

The moderate group won a commitment in Tuesday’s resolution that House leaders will schedule a vote on the infrastructure bill by Sept. 27. That bill was already passed by the U.S. Senate with the support of 19 Republicans earlier this month.

But the internal friction on the timing of the two measures signals a potentially tough road ahead for Democrats, who hold an exceptionally slim majority in both the House and the Senate.

Put together, the measures are core tenets of President Joe Biden’s agenda to rebuild the country following the COVID-19 pandemic by launching a sweeping investment in infrastructure and jobs.

Mr. Biden announced his agenda in Pittsburgh on March 31 and before a joint session of Congress, in which he highlighted Pittsburgh manufacturing capabilities to jumpstart the U.S. economy.

Labor unions like the United Steelworkers are clamoring for the passage of both measures. The bipartisan infrastructure bill would dole out billions of dollars to Pennsylvania for roads, airports, railways, water and sewer systems, broadband expansion and other physical assets.

But the deal, negotiated over months between Senate Democrats and Republicans, did not go as far as some advocates wanted.

The infrastructure bill dropped the proposed 48C tax credit, for example, that would benefit clean energy manufacturing projects. The credit was introduced earlier this year by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and is expected to be included in the Democrats-only bill outlined by the budget blueprint passed Tuesday.

The BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor and environmental groups founded in part by the United Steelworkers, said Tuesday the budget blueprint will “fill gaps left in the bipartisan infrastructure bill” to grow clean energy and rebuild American manufacturing.

“We need Congress to deliver for workers and the environment by making the budget framework a reality and putting it on the president’s desk so we can get to work building the economy of the future — one with good-paying jobs, that lifts up struggling communities, and builds a more equitable country for all,” said Jessica Eckdish, the group’s vice president of legislation and federal affairs.

After tense negotiations on Monday refereed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Democrats insist they are united in wanting to pass the second bill.

Mr. Doyle, as a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, would oversee broadband expansion, power grid investments and tax incentives to spur the growth of energy storage.

“I voted to pass the #BuildBackBetter Budget,” Mr. Doyle wrote on Twitter Tuesday. “This # budget would create millions of #jobs & build on the bipartisan #InfrastructureBill by making # healthcare & #childcare more affordable, fighting the #ClimateCrisis, and lowering taxes for working families.”

Republicans, while they have expressed openness to supporting the physical infrastructure bill, have rallied against the spending bill.

On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, joined other House Republicans outside the U.S. Capitol to express his concerns about the effect the plans would have on the national deficit.

The physical infrastructure bill could increase the deficit by $256 billion, and the Democrats- only bill contemplates raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Mr. Kelly, an architect of the 2017 GOP tax cuts, opposes that idea, and well as proposed efforts to boost tax collection.

“I can’t imagine sitting down with my grandchildren and saying, ‘Grandpa’s got an idea: you’re going to make about $38,000, and grandma and I think you should go out and spend $ 68,000,’” Mr. Kelly said Tuesday.

“Why do we think that spending ourselves into oblivion somehow is going to win the next election for us?” he said. “It’s not a matter of who wins the election, it’s who puts this country in the right direction.”