Pelosi relayed the emerging deal to Biden. Moderates would issue a statementagreeing to vote for BBB later this month and after they had “fiscal information” from the Congressional Budget Office. Pelosi and Biden spoke at least four times on Friday as they engineered a deal to unstick the two bills and round up a majority to pass BIF, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.
Now, she lamented, it played out “on 24/7 platforms where there are opinions going out, characterizations going out before anybody even knew what was going on.” “This is the Democratic Party.” In the old days, she suggested, a deal between warring factions - like the ones led by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-Wash.) and moderate leader JOSH GOTTHEIMER (D-N.J.) - all got worked out behind the scenes. “Welcome to my world,” she told reporters. On the Hill, Speaker NANCY PELOSI tried to downplay the disarray. He gathered Vice President KAMALA HARRIS and his top policy and legislative aides in the second floor residence and spent the night calling House members. So instead of relaxing at the beach, Biden set up a war room in the White House. The deadlock dragged down Biden’s poll numbers and may have helped cost TERRY MCAULIFFE the governorship of Virginia. The standoff twice humiliated Pelosi and Biden when the president and the speaker tried and failed to pass BIF in September and October. It was the same process issue that has bedeviled Democrats all year: Progressives refused to vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill (BIF), the prized piece of legislation for moderates, unless it was attached to the larger Build Back Better reconciliation bill (BBB), the crown jewel of progressive policy-making. For the third time in three months, his domestic agenda - and with it his presidency - was threatened by a standoff between moderates and progressives.
Friday evening, three days after Democrats suffered an embarrassing defeat in Virginia, the president and first lady were scheduled to decamp to the family beach house in Rehoboth.īiden abruptly canceled those plans. He doesn’t like to spend the weekends here. “I’m so happy to say that: Infrastructure week.”īiden wasn’t supposed to be in Washington. “Finally! Infrastructure week,” President JOE BIDEN declared this morning at the White House, during remarks celebrating House passage of BIF late last night. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo DRIVING THE DAY The standoff twice humiliated President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi when they tried and failed to pass BIF in September and October.
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