House Passes Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill After Moderate & Progressive Democrats Strike Deal on Reconciliation Bill

What’s the story?

• The House of Representatives voted late Friday night to send the bipartisan infrastructure package to President Joe Biden’s desk after Democrats reached an intra-party agreement between progressives and moderates which allowed the infrastructure bill to advance and outlined a path forward on a social spending plan.
• The $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed the Senate in August on a 69-30 vote but had been stymied until Friday when it cleared the House on a 228-206 vote with 13 Republicans in favor and six progressive Democrats opposed. The president is expected to sign the bill into law in the coming days. Read more about the major provisions of the bipartisan infrastructure bill here.
• The House was in session for more than 14 hours on Friday as Democrats negotiated amongst themselves on how to proceed. For much of the day it seemed as though a deal would prove elusive as it had at the end of September, and Democratic leaders left a procedural vote on a motion to adjourn open for over eight hours ― which set a record for the longest vote in the history of the House ― as they tried to end the impasse.
• Progressives had blocked the bipartisan infrastructure bill since September and insisted that they would only vote in favor of it once the larger social spending plan was approved on a partisan basis through the budget reconciliation process, or they had a commitment from moderate Democrats to pass the Build Back Better Act. Democrats can only lose three votes from members of their caucus and pass bills on party-line votes, and progressives wanted to ensure that moderates didn’t balk at the larger social spending plan after the bipartisan bill passed so they vowed to only vote for both at the same time.
• While House Democrats negotiated a new version of the social spending plan Thursday that was agreeable to both wings of the party, it hasn’t been “scored” by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to estimate its budgetary and economic impacts. Moderates have insisted that they won’t vote for the package without a CBO analysis of the full package, which likely won’t be completed until the week of November 15th at the earliest.
• To reach a compromise, progressives agreed to release the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the holdout moderates made a public pledge to vote for the Democrats’ social spending plan the week of November 15th as long as the CBO score is similar to the White House’s preliminary estimate. 
• Following the House’s passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill in the waning hours of Friday night, it voted on the rule to structure debate around Democrats’ forthcoming social spending plan shortly after midnight.

— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: iStock.com / uschools)