Centrists hold the keys to Biden bills
With few votes to spare, president works phone
WASHINGTON – With nearly no votes to spare, Democratic leaders tried to resolve lingering concerns of moderate lawmakers Friday in hopes of finally pushing President Joe Biden’s multitrillion-dollar domestic agenda through the House.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-calif., and other leaders met privately with centrists who say they want an official cost estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office before voting on a 10-year, $1.85 trillion social and environment bill. Democrats can lose no more than three votes in the narrowly divided House to pass the legislation.
Biden said he would “make some calls” to lawmakers. He said he would ask them to “vote yes on both these bills right now.”
Leaders want to pass that legislation, and a separate five-year, $1 trillion package of road and other infrastructure projects, to quickly notch accomplishments just days after a gubernatorial election defeat in Virginia and disprospects appointing contests elsewhere. They also wanted the votes to occur before Congress left by the weekend for a week-long recess.
Leaders have said complete CBO figures won’t be available for days or more. “We’re working on it,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD., said of the talks. By late morning, a House procedural vote was underway that started over three hours earlier as behind-thescenes discussions continued.
House passage of Biden’s larger measure would send it to the Senate, where it would face certain changes and more Democratic drama. That’s 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 mountains of jobs, had been blocked by House progressives to pressure moderates to back the larger family and climate-change legislation.
Pelosi met late Thursday with Hispanic lawmakers wanting the larger measure to go as far as possible in helping immigrants remain in the U.S. Their for bold action are limited by strict Senate rules, though. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., said Friday that they’d 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 roadsbridges-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 and 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 state-and-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.