House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are going back to the drawing board, or back to the mattresses, depending on how you look at the fact that the House vote of the God Package has been delayed until Halloween.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Saturday set a new deadline of Oct. 31 for the House to pass the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.
In a "Dear Colleague" letter released on Saturday, Pelosi said that “more time was needed” to pass the infrastructure bill along with the larger, $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package after scrambling over the past two days to get enough votes.
The Speaker said she wants to pass the bipartisan bill by Oct. 31, when the 30-day reauthorization of federal highway programs expires. The House passed the extension Friday night amid the Democratic infighting over infrastructure.
“There is an October 31st Surface Transportation Authorization deadline, after last night’s passage of a critical 30-day extension,” Pelosi wrote. “We must pass BIF [bipartisan infrastructure framework] well before then – the sooner the better, to get the jobs out there.”
House Democrats tried to break an impasse between moderates and progressives on the bipartisan infrastructure package after progressives threatened to sink it if the larger “human infrastructure” bill would not pass via budget reconciliation.
President Biden visited Democrats on Friday seeking to ease tensions between the two factions, during which he told moderates that the vote would not happen that day. However, he also called for the liberal wing of the party to be willing to compromise.
Both bills are critical to realizing Biden's domestic agenda.
Vice-President Kyrsten Sinema smells blood in the water after she called Nancy Pelosi's cards earlier this week and got her to pull the vote.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) on Saturday slammed the decision to delay a vote this week on the bipartisan infrastructure deal that she helped negotiate, calling it “inexcusable.”
Good-faith negotiations, the Arizona centrist argued, "require trust."
"Over the course of this year, Democratic leaders have made conflicting promises that could not all be kept — and have, at times, pretended that differences of opinion within our party did not exist, even when those disagreements were repeatedly made clear directly and publicly," Sinema said in a statement.
“Canceling the infrastructure vote further erodes that trust. More importantly, it betrays the trust the American people have placed in their elected leaders and denies our country crucial investments to expand economic opportunities,” Sinema continued.
Sinema clearly believes she has won this fight. Time will tell if she actually has won or not. The biggest loser is Rep Pramila Jayapal and her progressive caucus in the House. Sinema beat all of them with one manicured hand tied behind her back.
Like Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe did during the Obama stimulus fight, the "moderates" know they hold 100% of the power, the leverage, and the votes.
What passes will only be what Sinema and Manchin allow, and it was never going to be any different.
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