House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA), and Joe Biden should enjoy stacking these failures.
Pelosi had said she would be holding a vote today on the bipartisan infrastructure bill now that they allegedly had a ‘framework’ for a deal on the bigger Build Back Better deal. But as I said earlier, it wasn’t at all clear if they truly had all their people on board with that, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and all the progressives who had been at odds, despite Biden touting the deal earlier today in remarks. It was clear from the progressives that they are hesitant about proceeding with only a framework to support the bill’s infrastructure. Several of their votes were also in doubt.
Pelosi warned them to not embarrass Biden by voting in favor of the bill.
Pelosi said that the Infrastructure Bill would be brought to the floor by Pelosi today, and the vote will remain open in order for the bill’s passage. Rep. Schakowsky inquired about Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Silena replied that they would get the bigger bill.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 28, 2021
But, it seems that people chose to embarrass Biden and turned him down despite Biden going to them to make his case.
It’s now been announced that there won’t be a vote on the infrastructure bill today, apparently they didn’t have enough of the progressives to go ahead.
Instead there will be a vote tonight on a short-term extension on highway funding, meaning they don’t have the votes for the infrastructure bill. This vote is necessary to prevent a Monday-triggered lapse of transportation funding. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s office announced that would be the final vote of the week which was another indication that there would be no vote on infrastructure.
That sets up a lot of things that have to be done by Dec. 3 — further transportation funding as well as dealing with the debt ceiling question when the rest of the government funding is likely to run out.
I think that’s the third time now that she’s had to put off the vote after specifically calling for it. Last month, twice and again now.
Biden and Pelosi are facing yet another embarrassing defeat. Now they’re talking about possibly next week but we shall see.
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