House Progressives Reverse Course, Say They’ll Vote For Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill After Manchin’s Press Conference
Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said on Monday that members will vote for a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill despite no assurance from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) that he will vote for a separate $1.75 trillion reconciliation bill.
“The president says he can get 51 votes for the bill,” Jayapal told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC Monday. “We are going to trust him.”
Earlier in the day, Manchin held a press conference in which he accused House progressives of playing “political games” and said, “Holding this bill hostage is not going to work in getting my support for this reconciliation bill.”
The House was scheduled to vote last week on the $1.2 trillion bill, which passed the Senate 69 to 30 in August as 19 Republicans joined all Democrats in voting for it. It was supposed to be one of two large spending packages that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said the Senate would pass, with the other being via the budget reconciliation process, which requires a simple majority to pass legislation, as opposed to 60 votes through regular order. Jayapal had said her caucus would not vote for the bipartisan deal until the Senate also passed a reconciliation bill.
Indeed, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said back in June, “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. If there is no bipartisan bill, then we’ll just go when the Senate passes a reconciliation bill.”
But Pelosi changed course and was hoping to bring the bipartisan bill to the floor last week. Jayapal and other progressives signaled they would not support it until they received assurances from Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) that they would at least agree to a framework on the reconciliation bill. However, Jayapal and her caucus are now indicating they will vote for the bipartisan deal without any such promises.
In recent weeks, Manchin has succeeded in getting Senate Democrats to remove or weaken many of the provisions in the reconciliation bill, which originally carried a price tag of $3.5 trillion to be spent over the next 10 years. Now, the figure stands at $1.75 trillion.
