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“Obviously, we need to be more involved,” said Representative Juan Vargas (D-Calif.), Describing the frustration of many House Democrats. who want to play a bigger role in the talks. “They have to be able to get something over there, and bring it here … That will be the hardest part.”
Pelosi is telling her members to hang in there for now, reflecting a degree of cautious confidence in Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, as well as her confidence that she can calm her anxious caucus. At a management meeting on Monday night, she told lawmakers they would let the Senate process unfold, according to several Democrats familiar with the meeting.
“The timing is what it is,” Pelosi said in a brief interview Monday night, referring to Schumer. “Like I said, bring the bill to the ground when you’re ready to go. So I respect his timing.
The Senate is expected to hold a test vote Wednesday on President Joe Biden’s $ 1.2 trillion infrastructure deal with the GOP, which includes nearly $ 600 billion in new funding for roads, bridges and the top. debit.
The bipartisan Senate bill is not yet finished, with both sides still fighting over how to pay it. Senate GOP leaders already predict Wednesday’s procedural vote “has no chance” of succeeding unless negotiators shape the law first.
But Schumer’s blow – forcing an initial vote – even with the bill still in the drafting stage – has animated disparate factions of House Democrats, with all corners of the caucus plotting a post-Senate voting strategy. The New York Democrat told the Senate on Monday night that he was proceeding as planned and that if Senate negotiators couldn’t finish on time, he could amend some of their committees’ already drafted transportation bills.
Pelosi, meanwhile, needs to cool down down anxious members who feel compelled to watch the talks sideways with little direct voice in a multibillion-dollar package they could vote on just weeks after Senate action.
“We’re not a cheap date,” joked House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), When asked about the House’s role in the talks. “I think we’re all in sync… The House is going to do what we have to do.”
Those who cross the Capitol Tensions erupted Monday with Chairman of the House Transport Committee Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) tearing up Senate talks in a private appeal. DeFazio, who is furious that the bipartisan negotiators appear to largely ignore the infrastructure bill he passed in the House earlier this year, even saying he hoped Senate talks would collapse.
He was not alone. Representative Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), Who also spoke on the call, later described the “broken down” process between the House and the Senate that upset him and some of his colleagues.
“It’s frustrating because I think we’re all rowing towards the same goal, but it’s fluid,” Carbajal said. “Sometimes it’s counterproductive and we take two, three steps forward and a few steps back.”
If the Senate test vote passes on Wednesday, House moderates privately plan an aggressive public relations campaign to convince Pelosi and his leadership team to immediately allow a vote on their side of the Capitol once the bill is over. the infrastructure will have been approved by the Senate.
Ten of those House centrists have already publicly called on their leaders to dissociate the bipartisan deal from the party line budget plan, urging the main Democrats to hold a vote before the August recess and “without any unnecessary or contrived delay to the arrival of the Senate. “
Progressives take the opposite course, intending to hold Pelosi against her previous engagement that the bipartisan Senate deal will not get a vote until this chamber also brings forward the Democrats’ vast social spending plan. The Liberals fear that moderate senators like Sen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.) will balk at any additional spending as soon as the small bill they negotiated is enacted, condemning the Democrats’ plans for a massive 3,500 investment. billion dollars in the safety net.
“I hope she will keep her wish. I think she will. She has been steadfast from the very beginning, ”said Rep. Jamaal Bowman (DN.Y.) of the speaker. “If she said it, she means it.”
But all of these maneuvers could prove to be in vain, with prospects for a bipartisan infrastructure bill looking uncertain from Monday evening. Democrats would need 10 Republicans to join them in pushing the measure forward – something GOP leaders have said won’t happen until it’s fully written down.
If the bipartisan deal crumbles, it will tear apart the Democrats’ carefully choreographed legislative plan, raising huge new questions about what the party would put on the ground in the fall. Several senior Democratic officials said on Monday that they still seriously believe negotiators could come to a deal, although they said it remained unclear how the two sides could agree on billions. dollars in funding mechanisms.
“We can do a lot of things here, but it doesn’t matter what we do if [the Senate] can’t get something through, ”said Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.). “The next two weeks are pretty critical. “
For weeks, much of the debate over Biden’s spending plans has been in the Senate, where Democrats must achieve perfect unity on all budget bills given the House’s 50-50 split. . But Democratic leaders will also face a huge hurdle in the House, where Pelosi’s tight margins will only shrink after a special election in Texas later this month.
After this second round of Texas, House Democrats will only be able to lose three votes on legislation. It promises to complicate the path of Biden’s massive domestic spending plan, not to mention the rest of Congress’ to-do list.
“There is always this tension between the House and the Senate,” said Representative John Larson (D-Conn.). “And with margins as thin as they are, it’s even more magnified as every vote becomes critical.”
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
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