House Dems delay huge social bill, plan infrastructure vote

Top Democrats abruptly postponed an expected House vote Friday on their 10-year, $1.85 trillion social and environment measure, as infighting between progressives and moderates once again sidetracked the pillar of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda.

In a bid to hand him a needed victory, leaders still prepared to try pushing an accompanying $1 trillion package of road and other infrastructure projects through the chamber and to his desk. But even the fate of that popular bill, expected to create jobs in every state, was in question.

The scrambled plans cast a fresh pall over a party that’s struggled for weeks to take advantage of its control of the White House and Congress by advancing its top priorities. That’s been hard, in part because of Democrats’ slender majorities, with bitter internal divisions forcing House leaders to miss several self-imposed deadlines for votes.

“Welcome to my world,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters, adding, “We are not a lockstep party.”

Democratic leaders had hoped to see the House approve both measures 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.

The party’s gubernatorial candidates were defeated in Virginia and squeaked through in New Jersey, two blue-leaning states. Democrats can ill afford to seem in disarray a year before midterm elections that could result in Republicans regaining congressional control.

Yet rather than delivering easy approval of the infrastructure bill to give Biden a chance for a victory lap, a group of progressives threatened to vote against it. They’ve long demanded that the two bills be voted on together to pressure moderates to support the larger, more expansive social measure.

With Democrats able to lose just three votes and prevail in the narrowly divided House, Pelosi said she would press ahead anyway, saying she had a “pretty good feel” for the support.

Pelosi for years has refused to hold votes on bills unless she had near certainty that they would pass to avoid embarrassing defeats.

Democrats’ day fell apart when, after hours of talks, a half-dozen moderates insisted they would vote against the sprawling package of health, education, family and climate change initiatives unless the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office first provided its cost estimate for the measure.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3EOQrvM