Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday vowed to push ahead with a House vote on a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that passed the Senate with bipartisan support, driving Democrats toward a showdown between moderate supporters of the bill and liberals who have said they will bring it down without progress on a separate social policy measure.
She did assure Americans that parts of the government would not run out of money after midnight, as the Senate moved toward passing legislation to keep funding flowing into early December.
Democrats are juggling four consequential tasks on the final day of the current fiscal year: keeping the government open past midnight, ensuring it can pay its debts, securing the infrastructure bill and drafting a climate change and social safety net bill that the speaker called the “culmination” of her congressional career.
The first task is nearing completion. The Senate was on track to approve the stopgap spending bill to keep the government funded, sending it to the House for final passage Thursday afternoon.
The rest is a mess. Liberal House members were meeting with the speaker at midday even as they continued to say they would oppose passage of the infrastructure bill. They are holding out for ironclad assurances that the Senate can pass an ambitious social policy bill that expands child care and early childhood education, creates a paid family and medical leave program and begins to tackle climate change, to name only a few provisions.
But Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, emphatically wrote Wednesday that he could not support legislation “designed to re-engineer the social and economic fabric of this nation and vengefully tax for the sake of wishful spending.” In an evenly divided Senate, that amounted to a veto threat of the current $3.5 trillion proposal, which uses large tax increases on the wealthy and corporations to pay for an ambitious array of social programs.
Ms. Pelosi, speaking at her weekly news conference, stayed relentlessly optimistic, speaking of the common ground she shares with Mr. Manchin, a fellow Italian American and Catholic.
“Let me tell you about negotiating: You cannot tire,” she said.
Both the infrastructure and social policy bills are major priorities for President Biden, who invested ample political capital in the infrastructure compromise and has staked his presidency on enactment of a transformational social policy package.
Despite repeated entreaties from Mr. Biden and top White House officials, two crucial Democratic holdouts — Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Mr. Manchin — have refused to specify their bottom line in negotiations. White House officials had hoped to extract a firm public commitment from them this week to eventually vote for the social policy measure, but their efforts have so far proved unsuccessful.
Instead, Mr. Manchin doubled down on his opposition to the $3.5 trillion package in its current form, issuing the blistering statement late Wednesday in which he criticized the ambitions of the bill as the “definition of fiscal insanity.” He did not rule out supporting a slimmed-down version, suggesting he would be willing to reverse some elements of Republicans’ 2017 tax law and expand some social programs — but only if they were subject to income thresholds to ensure federal aid only went to those most in need.
White House officials declined to discuss the details of meetings and discussions with senators, which have intensified in recent days as some Democrats have grumbled that the president needed to play a bigger role in ensuring the success of his agenda.
Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House, rejected the criticism, saying Mr. Biden was doing precisely what he needed to.
“He knows how to make his case, he knows how to count votes, and he knows how to deliver for the American middle class,” Mr. Bates said.
But it was unclear, with Republican leaders in the House urging their members to oppose the bipartisan infrastructure bill, whether the legislation could overcome liberal defections on Thursday.
On Wednesday night, Ms. Pelosi could be seen working the phones from the stands of Nationals Stadium near the Capitol, where Republicans and Democrats were facing off for charity in the annual Congressional Baseball Game. Gesticulating as she spoke into a mobile phone, Ms. Pelosi appeared to be having an intense conversation as she fought to keep the infrastructure measure on track.
Mr. Biden also made an appearance at the game, where he chatted with Ms. Pelosi and Democrats, visited the Republican dugout and handed out ice cream bars.
"in" - Google News
September 30, 2021 at 11:01PM
https://ift.tt/2Y7zcGm
Congress Races to Avert Government Shutdown, With Biden’s Agenda in the Balance - The New York Times
"in" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MLa3Y1
https://ift.tt/2YrnuUx
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Congress Races to Avert Government Shutdown, With Biden’s Agenda in the Balance - The New York Times"
Post a Comment