The president has been meeting with a steady stream of lawmakers as he tries to pass his infrastructure bill.
House Democrats scrapped plans on Thursday to vote on the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure agreement after leadership and the White House failed to bring progressives and moderates together behind a path forward for President Joe Biden’s broader agenda.
“The President is grateful to Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer for their extraordinary leadership, and to Members from across the Democratic Caucus who have worked so hard the past few days to try to reach an agreement on how to proceed on the Infrastructure Bill and the Build Back Better plan,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Thursday night. “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.”
“While Democrats do have some differences, we share common goals of creating good union jobs, building a clean energy future, cutting taxes for working families and small businesses, helping to give those families breathing room on basic expenses—and doing it without adding to the deficit, by making those at the top pay their fair share,” Psaki added.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., left the Capitol just after midnight, and told Rachel Scott that progressives and moderates are closer to reaching an agreement on the size of their social policy package than it appeared earlier in the week.
“We’re not trillions of dollars apart,” Pelosi said.
Asked about the vote on the Senate-approved infrastructure bill that didn’t take place Thursday, Pelosi said, “There will be a vote today,” in what appeared to be a reference to the legislative calendar.
The decision to delay the vote came after Pelosi insisted Thursday morning that she planned to go ahead with a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill — despite progressive Democrats vowing to defeat it.
“We’re on a path to win. I don’t want to even consider any options other than that,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference. “We go in it to win it.”
Earlier, as she arrived on Capitol Hill, pressed by a reporter that the bill is facing “insurmountable opposition at the moment,” Pelosi responded that it’s “our plan” to bring the bill to vote Thursday, her self-imposed deadline.
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“Hour by hour,” she responded. “You’re moment by moment. I’m hour-by-hour.”
“You cannot tire. You cannot concede. This is the fun part,” Pelosi said later at her news conference. “Our best interest is served by passing this bill today.”
Yet her comments suggested the House was in a holding pattern, with no firm decision on whether to hold or cancel the vote.
“We are proceeding in a very positive direction,” Pelosi said brightly, even though the bill has not been scheduled for the House floor and her top lieutenants have said publicly that it lacks the votes to pass.
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Meanwhile, the White House wasn’t ruling out Biden heading to Capitol Hill Thursday to make a last-minute push to House Democrats just before the big vote.
While lawmakers were expected to agree separately on a government funding resolution with hours to spare Thursday, the outcome of the House vote on the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill — central to Biden’s agenda — was still in serious doubt.
Pelosi spent the afternoon meeting with various factions of her caucus. Even as progressives left the meeting vowing to withhold support for the infrastructure bill absent progress on Democrats’ larger agenda, two groups of moderates left meetings with Pelosi predicting a vote later Thursday evening.
Progressive Democrats have all but guaranteed that they will defeat the bipartisan bill on the floor — to the embarrassment of Pelosi who vowed to pass the bill th… (Read more)
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