By Andrew Trunsky
The House Tuesday voted on a deal to adopt the framework for President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion budget and advance the bipartisan infrastructure bill after Democratic leadership and moderates broke an hours-long stalemate over how the two would be prioritized in the coming weeks.
The deal, which passed 220-212 on a party-line vote, allows for the House to begin crafting its reconciliation bill and sets the infrastructure package up to pass the chamber on Sept. 27. It followed multiple Rules Committee hearings and hours of intraparty deliberations between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her team and a group of moderate Democrats who insisted on taking up the infrastructure bill first, directly opposed to both dozens of progressives and the speaker herself.
On the House floor, Pelosi said the deal represented “a great day of pride for our country and Democrats,” adding that “by Oct. 1, we will hope to have in place … the legislation for infrastructure that is bipartisan.”
The impasse torpedoed the original plan to vote on the rule Monday night, even as top Democrats pleaded with the holdouts in their party to vote in favor.
“You all have to vote for the goddamn rule,” House Rules Chairman Jim McGovern reportedly said Monday night. “Why wouldn’t we begin this process? Whether we pass it today or on Oct. 1, none of the money can be spent until Oct. 1.”
The standoff continued Tuesday, but was resolved after leadership committed to voting on the infrastructure package on Sept. 27.
“These negotiations are never easy,” McGovern later told reporters Tuesday. “It is my hope that my colleagues who recognize the very simple choice to advance the president’s agenda or obstruct it.”
Republicans, however, railed against the deal as a “scheme” that would enable a reckless spending spree that would cripple the country and young Americans.
“The American people are fed up with the Democrats’ reckless spending,” said Missouri Republican Rep. Jason Smith, the House Budget Committee’s ranking member. “They bring forth a budget resolution that … has $6 trillion in new spending. The most spending in the history of this country.”
“[Vermont Independent Sen.] Bernie Sanders may have lost the presidential primary, but his policies have won,” he added.
The deal also advances Democrats’ voting rights bill named for the late congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis, setting up a vote to pass it in the coming days.
Democrats had remained at odds for weeks over how the House should approach the infrastructure package and budget. Dozens of progressives have vowed to oppose the bipartisan bill unless the House first passes the budget, a mammoth spending bill that addresses priorities from climate change and childcare to health care and immigration, giving Pelosi little room for error given her slim three-vote majority.
Following the progressives’ demands, however, nine moderate Democrats pledged the opposite, vowing to tank their party’s budget if the House did not first pass the infrastructure package.
“With the lives of hardworking American families at stake, we simply can’t afford months of unnecessary delays and risk squandering this once-in-a-century, bipartisan infrastructure package,” the group, led by New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer, wrote on Aug. 13. “It’s time to get shovels in the ground and people to work.”
In response to their position, Pelosi, who had previously committed to bringing the budget to the floor first, floated passing both simultaneously, but to no success.
“We are firmly opposed to holding the president’s infrastructure legislation hostage to reconciliation, risking its passage and the bipartisan support behind it,” they wrote.
Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy joined their ranks Monday evening, further damning the vote that was supposed to take place. “I cannot in good conscience vote to start the reconciliation process unless we also finish our work on the infrastructure bill,” she wrote in an Orlando Sentinel op-ed.
Despite the budget’s advancement, the $3.5 trillion figure is unlikely to translate into law. Moderates in the Senate have echoed their House counterparts regarding their concerns over the bill’s size and lack of scope, meaning that the bill as written will not survive a 50-50 Senate.
A spokesman for Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in a statement Monday called the bipartisan package “a historic win for our nation’s everyday families and employers,” and said it, “like every proposal, should be considered on its own merits.” He added that “proceedings in the U.S. House will have no impact on Kyrsten’s views about what is best for our country — including the fact that she will not support a budget reconciliation bill that costs $3.5 trillion.”
Shortly after Sinema’s comments, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin urged the House to “put politics aside” and pass the bipartisan package first. The bill passed the Senate on Aug. 10, and the budget framework was adopted just before 4 a.m. the following day.
“This is not about party or politics, it’s about doing what’s right for the country,” Manchin said. “It would send a terrible message to the American people if this bipartisan bill is held hostage.”
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$3.5 TRILLION as a down payment for many decades of CLIMATE FIGHTING (tilting at wind mills)?
Oh, no.
The real purpose is to create more and expanded Socialistic, do-goodie government programs, that will bribe the inhabitants of Dem/Prog-controlled cities to vote Dem/Prog forever.
“Global warming fighting” has nothing to do with reducing the world temperature, because mankind’s very puny efforts would completely pale compared to the daily energy input from the sun.
This is all about centralized command/control of all phases of our lives, while the “politically unfavored” are mandated to toil to meet the increasingly nutty mandates of Dem/Progs
About half the world population is exempt from those world-saving toils, by Paris agreements.
John Kerry flies his private jets worldwide, while playing the role of climate TSAR.
Bernie refuses to fly, except first class, or on borrowed private planes.
Life is getting better for elite Dem/Progs
CHINA IS HELPING VERMONT
China To Build 43 New Coal-Fired Power Plants
China is planning to build 43 new coal-fired power plants and 18 new blast furnaces — equivalent to adding about 1.5% to its current annual emissions — according to a new report. The new projects were announced in the first half of this year despite the world’s largest polluter pledging to bring its emissions to a peak before 2030, and to make the country carbon neutral by 2060.
The news shows that at least some in China are prioritizing economic growth over emissions reductions — although some analysts say they are still optimistic that China will reach its climate targets. “There is this desire in the Chinese political and economic system to keep on building, to continue the infrastructure fever,” says Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser for Greenpeace in Beijing.
The report on China’s new coal plants was written by the Helsinki-based research organization the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and the U.S. group Global Energy Monitor (GEM) and released on Aug. 13. It came just days after the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published an alarming report that concluded human-caused climate change is an “unequivocal” reality. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called the IPCC report a “code red for humanity.”
China is leading the world in new coal power plants, building more than three times as much new coal power capacity as all other countries in the world combined in 2020. It isn’t alone in its reliance on coal, however. China and four other countries, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam, account for more than 80% of the coal power stations planned across the world, according to a June report by the think-tank Carbon Tracker.
But it’s not all bad news. China has pledged to reduce its energy intensity — measured by comparing total energy consumed to GDP — and its carbon intensity — the carbon-dioxide produced per dollar of GDP — by 2025. Chinese President Xi Jinping said in April the country will also reduce coal use beginning in 2026.
Despite the development of coal power plants, China is a renewable energy leader,accounting for about 50% of the world’s growth in renewable energy capacity in 2020
https://time.com/6090732/china-coal-power-plants-emissions/?mc_cid=4013cbbc49&mc_eid=870a48a53b
The gullible greens still try to convince themselves that China really is going to cut emissions eventually. They cling on to the pledge of reducing energy and carbon intensity, but they really ought to realise that this is a meaningless promise, as all maturing economies do this as they expand into consumer goods and services. This does not mean though that energy consumption will actually decline, simply that the economy will grow faster than energy use does.
Then there is the nonsense about China being the world’s leader in renewable energy. Naturally, given the size of their economy, everything thing they do is big. But the sad reality is that wind and solar power still only contributed a paltry 4% of China’s energy last year.
As for Xi’s “promises”, we might recall that Senile Joe actually believed the Taliban.
The report reckons that these new coal plants and blast furnaces will add 150 million tonnes to China’s CO2 emissions. This is roughly half the UK’s total emissions.
So the wicked witch of the west roped in the moderates… guess their not that moderate to approve the boondoggle mother of all pork spending..
23 Billion is the number going to Infrastructure pretty pathetic