[ "Passing the infrastructure bill without passing the Build Back
Better Act first," said Rep. Ilhan Omar, "risks leaving behind child
care, paid leave, healthcare, climate action, housing, education, and
a roadmap to citizenship."] [[link removed]]

'FOOLISHNESS': HOUSE PASSES INFRASTRUCTURE BILL BUT POSTPONES BUILD
BACK BETTER ACT  
[[link removed]]


 

Kenny Stancil
November 6, 2021
Common Dreams
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_ "Passing the infrastructure bill without passing the Build Back
Better Act first," said Rep. Ilhan Omar, "risks leaving behind child
care, paid leave, healthcare, climate action, housing, education, and
a roadmap to citizenship." _

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Majority Leader Steny
Hoyer (D-Md.), and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) hold a
press conference in the U.S. Capitol on Friday, November 5, 2021. ,
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

 

THE U.S. HOUSE ON Friday night passed a bipartisan physical
infrastructure bill but didn't bring the Build Back Better Act to the
floor—sending just one half of President Joe Biden's two-pronged
economic agenda to the White House, with only a pledge that
conservative House Democrats will vote for the party's broader social
infrastructure and climate package at a later date.

"Passing BIF gives up our leverage to get Build Back Better through
the House and Senate, and I fear that we are missing our
once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in the American people."

That wasn't the plan on Friday morning. When the day started, Biden
and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said
[[link removed]]
they wanted House Democrats to pass both parts of the president's
legislative agenda: the Build Back Better Act (BBB), which would
invest $1.75 trillion over 10 years to strengthen climate action and
the welfare state; and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,
also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF), a fossil
fuel-friendly
[[link removed]]
proposal to upgrade the nation's roads, bridges, and ports that was
approved
[[link removed]]
by the U.S. Senate in August.

Due to the intransigence of a few right-wing House Democrats who made
last-minute demands
[[link removed]]
for additional fiscal information that could take weeks to obtain, and
the acquiescence of Pelosi and Biden, a planned floor vote on BBB
was shelved and reduced to a "rule for consideration
[[link removed]]," which was approved
[[link removed]]
in a party-line vote of 221-213. Prior to that, BIF passed
[[link removed]] by a tally
of 228-206, with 13 House Republicans joining
[[link removed]] most
Democrats in supporting the measure.

Because it wasn't accompanied by a real vote on BBB, six
progressives—Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.),
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna
Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—voted
against BIF.

"Passing the infrastructure bill without passing the Build Back Better
Act first," Omar said
[[link removed]]
in a statement, "risks leaving behind child care, paid leave,
healthcare, climate action, housing, education, and a roadmap to
citizenship."

For months, progressives have stressed
[[link removed]]—and
Democratic leaders had agreed
[[link removed]]—that
keeping both pieces of legislation linked and passing them in tandem
was key to securing Biden's entire agenda. Holding a floor vote on BIF
and a mere procedural action on BBB, progressives argued
[[link removed]]
Friday, was a betrayal of the two-track
[[link removed]]
strategy that opens the door for right-wing party members who are
content with the passage of BIF to further weaken, or completely
abandon, the already heavily gutted
[[link removed]]
BBB.

"We're proud of the Squad for being courageous and standing up for
what's right tonight," Varshini Prakash, executive director of Sunrise
Movement, said in a statement. "It's bullshit that President Biden and
Speaker Pelosi rammed through a bill written by a bunch of
corporations but feel fine to hold off on passing Biden's own agenda,
a popular bill that would actually combat climate change and help
working people."

"To be clear, the BIF is not a climate bill and the stakes of the
climate crisis are too high to delay reconciliation any longer, or
worse, let it die along with our futures," added Prakash.

Mary Small, national advocacy director at the Indivisible Project,
said
[[link removed]]
in a statement that Bowman, Bush, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and
Tlaib "demonstrated enormous political courage in their continued
fight to hold the line for passage of the Build Back Better Act." 

"They understand better than anyone what's at stake with this
game-changing package of investments in children and families and our
climate," Small added. "Their votes showed that, unlike the corporate
Democrats dead-set on derailing the heart of President Biden's agenda
on behalf of their corporate donors, they know what it means to serve
the people they represent."

Even though analyses of spending and revenue conducted by the U.S.
Treasury Department
[[link removed]],
the White House
[[link removed]],
and the Joint Committee on Taxation
[[link removed]]
have found that BBB is paid for and may actually reduce deficits, a
small group
[[link removed]] of
conservative House Democrats on Friday insisted
[[link removed]] on
seeing an official score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
before they would vote for BBB.

Given the razor-thin margins in Congress, Democrats can afford only
three defections in the House and none in the Senate to pass BBB
through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process. Meanwhile,
it could take the CBO weeks to produce a score, and there is no
guarantee that the holdouts will be satisfied with the results, which
are notoriously arbitrary and unreliable, according to
[[link removed]] experts.

Ironically, the CBO determined
[[link removed]]
earlier this year that the $550 billion BIF adds $256 billion to the
deficit. BIF supporters' lack of concern about such a finding prompted
critics to suggest
[[link removed]] that
Friday's request for a CBO score by several right-wing House
Democrats, including
[[link removed]] Reps. Ed
Case (Hawaii), Jared Golden (Maine), Stephanie Murphy (Fla.), Kathleen
Rice (N.Y.), Kurt Schrader (Ore.), and Abigail Spanberger (Va.) was
nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to tank the more ambitious
portion of Biden's agenda.

Although those lawmakers' constituents support
[[link removed]] BBB
by large margins, powerful corporate interests opposed to the
legislation have carried out a massive lobbying blitz
[[link removed]]
against the bill's key provisions
[[link removed]]
and showered obstructionist politicians with cash
[[link removed]].

"With BIF passed, one could easily imagine a scenario where Manchin
just walks."

Following the CBO curveball, Pelosi proposed
[[link removed]] bringing
BIF to the floor for a vote and passing a rule to set up a future
vote on BBB. The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) originally
rejected
[[link removed]]
this plan, which deviated from the Democratic Party's
well-established strategy of enacting the two bills simultaneously.

CPC Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said
[[link removed]]
in a Friday afternoon statement that "if our six colleagues still want
to wait for a CBO score, we would agree to give them that time—after
which point we can vote on both bills together." Roughly 20 CPC
members reportedly
[[link removed]] told
Jayapal during a closed-door meeting on Friday afternoon that they
would vote against BIF if it was decoupled from BBB.

According to
[[link removed]] Manu Raju,
chief congressional correspondent at _CNN_, progressives were left
wondering: "Why is Pelosi putting the infrastructure bill on [the]
floor and daring them to vote against it when there are 20 or so who
won't support it tonight? Why not put Build Back Better on [the] floor
and dare 6 moderates to vote against it?"

Over the course of several hours, conservative House Democrats, led by
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), and the CPC, led by Jayapal, worked
out a deal, at the behest
[[link removed]] of Biden.

CPC member Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) told
[[link removed]]
_The Hill_ that Biden was urging progressives to vote for BIF as well
as the rule for consideration of BBB, "subject to some assurances
and commitments that he was working to get." 

Those "assurances and commitments" came in the form of a statement
[[link removed]] from
Case, Gottheimer, Murphy, Rice, and Schrader, which said: "We commit
to voting for the Build Back Better Act, in its current form other
than technical changes, as expeditiously as we receive fiscal
information from the Congressional Budget Office—but in no event
later than the week of November 15—consistent with the toplines for
revenues and investments" projected by the White House.

_The Intercept_'s Ryan Grim argued
[[link removed]] that while
"the focus is on progressives," the few conservative lawmakers
preventing both bills from passing on Friday were "doing it right in
the open."

Calling the corporate Democrats' statement "foolishness," former Ohio
state Sen. Nina Turner said that if they are committed to voting for
BBB "no later than November 15, they can do it now."

Other critics also raised questions about conservative Democrats'
endgame. 

"A statement of support for BBB that is contingent on the CBO score
could be more of an escape hatch... than a commitment to vote for
BBB," warned Adam Jentleson, a former congressional staffer and
current executive director of the Battle Born Collective, a
progressive communications firm.

While progressives are being told to trust the obstructionists, who
"have promised to vote for BBB when the CBO score comes in and says
what everybody says it will say," Grim noted, he questioned
[[link removed]]why those
conservative Democrats are refusing to accept reputable budget
estimates already provided by the White House and others.

"Progressives' lack of trust in these few holdouts," he added, "flows
from the complete illogic of their public position, which raises
questions about their actual position."

Biden, for his part, said
[[link removed]]
in a statement that he is "confident that during the week of November
15, the House will pass the Build Back Better Act." But that still
leaves the Senate, where the Democratic Party's two biggest obstacles
to social investments—right-wing Sens. Joe Manchin
[[link removed]]
(D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema
[[link removed]]
(D-Ariz.)—are waiting, with less incentive to support BBB now that
BIF has been approved.

In a statement, Tlaib warned
[[link removed]]
that "passing BIF gives up our leverage to get Build Back Better
through the House and Senate, and I fear that we are missing our
once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in the American people."

Paul Williams, a fellow at the Jain Family Institute, noted
[[link removed]] that "the
issue of course is that there's no guarantee the CBO will even have
scores out for BBB by Nov. 15—the day BIF becomes law even with no
signature, and thus very slim chance it even gets to the Senate by
that date, and zero chance Senate makes its changes and passes by
then."

"The reason we're not celebrating a major victory tonight sits
squarely with the conservative Democrats who sabotaged progress at
every turn."

"With BIF passed, one could easily imagine a scenario where Manchin
just walks—he would have what he came to get, a bipartisan bill,"
Williams added. "Of course Biden could use [the] threat of [a] veto to
send BIF back to Congress, but he only has 10 days—Nov. 15—to do
so before it becomes law with no action."

Indivisible pointed out that "if the White House and Democratic
leadership had spent more time today moving the corporate conservative
Democrats hell-bent on standing in the way of these critical and
massively popular proposals instead of forcing progressives to support
a position that puts it all at risk, we might be in a different
place."

Ahead of the vote, Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of
Indivisible, suggested
[[link removed]] that
Democrats "include a deeming resolution in which they vote for the BIF
but hold it at Pelosi's desk until the House passes BBB," but such
language was not introduced.

"Progressives_ again_ negotiated in good faith
and_ again_ reiterated their commitment to passing the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Framework alongside the Build Back Better Act," said
Indivisible. "The reason we're not celebrating a major victory tonight
sits squarely with the conservative Democrats who sabotaged progress
at every turn. They reminded us again that they work for their
corporate donors and not the people they represent. We won't soon
forget."

"We are counting on President Biden to follow through on his
commitment to deliver the votes needed for final passage in the House
and Senate, and on [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer (D-N.Y.) to
put the Build Back Better Act on the Senate floor as soon as it is
received from the House."

Sunrise Movement, meanwhile, put this fight into the context of the
United States' fraying democracy.

"Progressives have made enough compromises. Our movement has fought
hard to defend the president's popular agenda and do what's best for
working people and our democracy," said Prakash. "If Democrats fail to
deliver on their elected promises, they risk everything in 2022 and
2024."

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