Democrats including President Joe Biden have tried to blame Republicans for stalling a major infrastructure bill.
But in the end, it might be brought down by a key player in their own party: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
She’s celebrating the July 4 holiday by stalling a critical bill necessary for the infrastructure of America.
Pelosi insisted this week that she won’t allow the House to vote on the Senate’s bipartisan compromise bill, which features a massive $1.2 trillion price tag, including $579 billion in new spending.
The reason: She wants more.
Pelosi indicated again this week that the bipartisan bill won’t come for a vote in the House unless it’s accompanied by a Democrat-only bill that has even more spending.
That’s a so-called “budget” bill, which is Democrat code for a massive spending bill rammed through the Senate without any Republican support via the “budget reconciliation” process, which is not subject to filibuster.
That’s on par with what Biden publicly said – and then had to walk back – when the deal was announced earlier this month.
“I expect that in the coming months this summer, before the fiscal year is over, that we will have voted on this bill, the infrastructure bill, as well as voted on the budget resolution,” he said. “But if only one comes to me, this is the only one that comes to me, I’m not signing it. It’s in tandem.”
Republicans accused Biden of a bait-and-switch, noting that it’s hardly a bipartisan deal if the Democrats simply intend to ram through a second bill with everything they want anyway.
And some threatened to walk.
“If reports are accurate that President Biden is refusing to sign a bipartisan deal unless reconciliation is also passed, that would be the ultimate deal breaker for me,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said via Twitter.
Biden went into damage control mode, insisting he wouldn’t veto the deal and wanted to work with Republicans.
That seemed to be enough to reassure the ones who had signed onto the deal.
“We were all blindsided by the comments the previous day, which were that . . . these two bills were connected,” Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said on “This Week” on ABC. “And I’m glad they’ve now been delinked and it’s very clear that we can move forward with a bipartisan bill that’s broadly popular, not just among members of Congress, but the American people.”
Now, however, Pelosi might do what the Republicans didn’t: sabotage the deal.
She said this week that she has to see what’s in the budget reconciliation package before she brings the bipartisan deal up for a vote – and CNN said her office has confirmed that she hasn’t backed off comments she made last week.
“Let me be really clear on this: We will not take up a bill in the House until the Senate passes the bipartisan bill and a reconciliation bill,” she said in a news conference at the time. “There ain’t gonna be no bipartisan bill, unless we have a reconciliation bill.”
That has the free-spending progressive wing of her party cheering.
But the centrists – no doubt worried they will have nothing to tout at home during a tough election cycle next year – are pushing back.
“I think that … a bill that can actually pass Congress and get to the President’s desk — I want to pass that,” Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, part of the more conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats, told CNN. “And so I want to strike while the iron is hot.”
Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell ripped into the partisan bickering – and urged Biden to get control over his party.
“The President cannot let congressional Democrats hold a bipartisan bill hostage over a separate and partisan process,” he said in a statement cited by The Hill.
But how much control Biden has over his unruly and divided conference remains to be seen.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.