Democrats have just approved Pelosi’s 3.5 trillion dollar blueprint and have scheduled a vote on the $1.2 trillion Senate infrastructure bill:
U.S. House approves $3.5 trillion budget blueprint and advances $1 trillion infrastructure bill https://t.co/gEcolNBhfe pic.twitter.com/xnNVba3yzU
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 24, 2021
Here’s more from Reuters:
The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to advance key parts of President Joe Biden’s agenda after reaching a tentative compromise between moderates and progressives over which elements should take priority.
The House voted to move forward on a package that would advance Biden’s ambitious plan for trillions of dollars to expand child care and other social programs, championed by the party’s progressive wing.
The vote was 220-212 with no Republicans supporting the measure.
They agreed to vote by Sept. 27 on a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, a priority for moderate Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also said her chamber would work with the Senate to nail down the details of a larger $3.5 trillion budget with increased spending for social programs.
Pelosi said that the House would work with the Senate on the details of the multitrillion-dollar budget outline, which Senate Democrats plan to pass using a maneuver that gets around that chamber’s normal rules requiring 60 of the 100 senators to agree to pass most legislation.
“It remains for us to work together, work with the Senate, to write a bill that preserves the privilege of 51 votes in the Senate,” Pelosi said. “So we must work together to do that in a way that passes the House and passes the Senate. And we must do so expeditiously.”
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy blasted Pelosi and other Democrats with bare-knuckle partisan rhetoric for working on an agreement to secure Biden’s domestic spending priorities and voting legislation, without addressing the crisis in Afghanistan.
“Maybe in your caucus, you think it is a great day for you and the Democrats,” McCarthy said. “It’s an embarrassing day to America, it’s an embarrassing day for this floor and it’s embarrassing that you would even move forward with it.”
Even by using reconciliation in the Senate to pass the 3.5 trillion dollar budget, Democrats still need Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin onboard. Sinema has already said she would not vote for it and unlike these so-called Democrat moderates in the House, she’s shown quite a bit of resolve in the past, especially on the filibuster. Hopefully she’ll stick to her guns on this one too.
But what this does mean is that the $1.2 trillion dollar Democrat ‘infrastructure’ bill will be on Biden’s desk in a month or so and he’ll most assuredly sign it. Which is a substantial loss for Republicans who were hoping these ‘moderates’ would stand their ground.