WASHINGTON -- Brushing past moderates, House Democratic leaders tried to muscle President Joe Biden's multitrillion-dollar budget blueprint over a key hurdle Monday night, hoping to shelve for now an intraparty showdown that risks upending their domestic infrastructure agenda.
Tensions rose as lawmakers returned for the evening session and a band of moderate lawmakers threatened to withhold their votes for the $3.5 trillion plan. They were demanding the House first approve the $1 trillion package of road, power grid, broadband and other infrastructure projects that's already passed the Senate.
But as the evening dragged on, the chamber came to a standstill and plans were thrown into flux as leaders and lawmakers huddled privately at the Capitol trying to broker an agreement.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi implored Democrats during a private caucus not to bog down and miss the chance to deliver on the promises Biden and the party have made to Americans.
"Right now, we have an opportunity to pass something so substantial for our country, so transformative, we haven't seen anything like it," said Pelosi, D-Calif., according to a person who requested anonymity to disclose the private comments.
Pelosi told them it was "unfortunate" they were discussing the process when they should be debating the policy. "We cannot squander this majority and this Democratic White House by not passing what we need to do," she said.
The speaker appealed to Democrats to back the budget, saying that voters who put Biden in the White House and their party in control of Congress were watching to see whether they would squander the opportunity to put in place a "transformative" measure, according to a person familiar with her comments.
With Republicans fully opposed to the president's plans, the Democratic leaders were trying to engineer a way out of a potentially devastating standoff between the party's moderate and progressive wings that risks Biden's agenda.
Pelosi's leadership sought to sidestep the issue by persuading lawmakers to vote to simply start the process and save the policy fight for the months ahead, when they will be crafting and debating details within the full $3.5 trillion budget proposal.
One by one, powerful committee chairmen urged their colleagues to move forward.
"There's a long way to go on legislative issues that are going to play out over the next month. But for the moment the argument here is about: Shall the House proceed?" said Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
Cabinet secretaries and some high-ranking White House officials have called wayward Democrats in recent days, urging them to support the budget and stressing that Biden backs Pelosi's insistence on moving it in tandem with the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
It was unclear if the moderates were fully on board, and as soon as one meeting broke, another private session was convened with them for further discussion. What had been a night of scheduled votes came to an unexpected standstill.
Confronting their party's most powerful leaders, nine moderate Democrats signed on to a letter last week raising their objections to pushing ahead with Biden's broader infrastructure proposal without first considering the smaller public works plan that has passed the Senate. Other moderates raised similar concerns in recent days.
"I'm bewildered by my party's misguided strategy to make passage of the popular, already-written, bipartisan infrastructure bill contingent upon passage of the contentious, yet-to-be-written, partisan reconciliation bill," wrote Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., a leader of the centrist Blue Dog caucus, in the Orlando Sentinel. "It's bad policy and, yes, bad politics."
Murphy added, "I cannot in good conscience vote to start the reconciliation process unless we also finish our work on the infrastructure bill."
'NOT A FOOTBALL'
Moderate or conservative Democrats have said they will not back down from their insistence that the bipartisan infrastructure bill move before the budget plan, even as some of them say they plan to ultimately support the blueprint and the reconciliation bill that springs from it.
"You don't hold up a major priority of the country, and millions of jobs, as some form of leverage," the Democrats wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece published Sunday evening. "The infrastructure bill is not a political football."
The group comprises Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Carolyn Bourdeaux of Georgia, Ed Case of Hawaii, Jared Golden of Maine, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Jim Costa of California, and Henry Cuellar, Vicente Gonzalez and Filemon Vela of Texas.
In the narrowly divided House, every vote matters, and a few dissenters could conceivably end the Democratic majority's hopes for passing any proposal.
With most of Biden's domestic agenda at stake, it's unimaginable that Pelosi would allow an embarrassing defeat. That's especially true because the package is stocked with priorities such as child care, paid family leave and a Medicare expansion that are hard-fought party goals, and at a time when the president is under criticism over his handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The $3.5 trillion budget resolution will set the stage this fall for further legislation directing money to be spent on the social safety net, environment and other programs over the next decade.
That huge measure is at the heart of Biden's vision for helping families and combating climate change and is progressives' top priority, all of it financed largely with tax increases on rich Americans and on big business.
Progressives signaled early on that they wanted the Biden budget priorities first before they agreed to the smaller package, worried it would be an insufficient down payment on his goals.
But the moderates want the opposite, insisting that Congress quickly send the smaller, bipartisan infrastructure measure to Biden so he can sign it before the political winds shift. That would nail down a victory they could point to in their reelection campaigns next year.
"The House can't afford to wait months or do anything to risk passing" the infrastructure bill, Gottheimer said last week. He's a leader of the nine moderate mavericks who each released statements reaffirming a desire that the infrastructure vote come first.
So far, the White House has backed Pelosi as she led her party in a tightly scripted strategy that aims to keep moderate and progressive lawmakers on board.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday underscored Biden's support for Pelosi's plans. Psaki deemed it a "healthy debate" within the party and said it was "a high-class problem to have" as Democrats debate the particulars of the legislation.
Republicans said the $3.5 trillion effort that Democrats are seeking to advance fails to address "the crisis that American families are facing" and would lead to higher inflation and deficits.
"The inflation crisis, the border crisis, the energy crisis, the Afghanistan crisis -- this budget only makes it worse," said Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee.
CABINET ASSURANCES
The dissenting Democrats have said they believe they are doing what Biden wants, citing comments he made this year calling on Congress to pass the infrastructure bill as quickly as possible. That view has irked many administration officials, who say the president never endorsed moving either the infrastructure deal or the budget blueprint before the other.
Biden "has been clear that he wants both bills on his desk and that he looks forward to signing each," Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, said in an emailed statement. "He supports Speaker Pelosi's approach to the rule because it provides for consideration of the Build Back Better agenda, the historic bipartisan infrastructure bill and critical voting rights legislation."
Administration officials who have made calls to the nine Democrats in recent days include Martin Walsh, the labor secretary; Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary; Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary; Shalanda Young, acting head of the White House Office of Management and Budget; Louisa Terrell, director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs; and Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council.
The officials sought to allay the moderates' fears that Biden would sign the larger spending bill without the infrastructure bill, according to a person familiar with the calls; they also voiced support for Pelosi's push to pass both bills by Oct. 1. Some officials have stressed benefits of the larger bill, including proposals to reduce the cost of prescription drugs.
Pelosi and her top deputies, backed by dozens of progressive lawmakers, remain equally adamant that the infrastructure vote will happen only after the Senate approves the budget package. In a series of open letters to members over the past week, senior Democrats framed a vote in support of the budget blueprint as a chance to shape key legislation and ensure passage of party priorities.
"Ensuring a bicameral reconciliation process, with true input from the House prior to the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure legislation, is essential to advancing critical Democratic priorities on infrastructure and so much more," wrote Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and a scathing critic of the bipartisan deal.
Information for this article was contributed by Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking, Alan Fram and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press; and by Emily Cochrane and Jim Tankersley of The New York Times.
