Nine Dems threatening to derail $3.5T budget and infrastructure bill
Nine moderate House Democrats are threatening a deadlock over the $3.5 trillion budget and bipartisan infrastructure bill, a new report says.
Signaling a major party rift, the moderate Dems say they won’t back their party’s ambitious budget spending plan until the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passes.
They informed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a letter made public on Friday.
Left-wing progressives have taken the opposite position, saying they won’t vote on the infrastructure bill until the $3.5 trillion social spending plan is passed in the Senate.
With a potential stalemate on the horizon, Pelosi has already made clear she won’t stage a vote on the infrastructure bill until the second package containing a long list of President Biden’s priorities is passed by the Senate.
The opposition from the nine Democrats could see them block the budget blueprint in the House.
“With the livelihoods of hardworking American families at stake, we simply can’t afford months of unnecessary delays and risk squandering this one-in-a-century, bipartisan infrastructure package,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) wrote as the letter’s lead author.
“It’s time to get shovels in the ground and people to work. We will not consider voting for a budget resolution until the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passes the House and is signed into law.”
Others who signed the letter include Filemon Vela, Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar of Texas, Ed Case of Hawaii, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Carolyn Bourdeaux of Georgia, Jared Golden of Maine and Jim Costa of California.
The infrastructure bill was passed in the Senate on Tuesday.
The Senate approved the $3.5 trillion budget plan in the early hours of Wednesday on a party-line 50-49 vote following a 15-hour “vote-a-rama.”
Some moderate Dems have already flagged concerns over the spending spree as inflation spikes and prices rise for household goods.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Wednesday he has “serious concerns” about the $3.5 trillion plan.
Manchin argued that the skyrocketing inflation rate and millions of job openings across America “are not indications of an economy that requires trillions in additional spending.”
“Over the past year, Congress has injected more than $5 trillion of stimulus into the American economy — more than any time since World War II — to response to the pandemic,” he said. “The challenge we now face is different.”
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump blasted Senate Democrats for executing what he called a “communist plan to destroy America.”
He said America was being “robbed” and that everyone needed to “wake up.”
