House Democrats aim for Thursday vote on social spending package
By Mike Lillis,Scott Wong and Cristina Marcos - 11/04/21 11:41 AM EDT
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Democrats are aiming to vote on their social spending package later Thursday, with a Friday vote on the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill, as they race to break an impasse on President Biden’s stalled domestic agenda.
It’s not yet clear if Democratic leaders will be able to round up the votes in their caucus, since some centrists want more time to review the legislative text and wait for a cost analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.
But Democrats emerged from a closed-door whip meeting in the Capitol saying the divisions that have prevented an agreement were falling away, and lawmakers were “un-circling the firing squad,” in the words of Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.).
"Hopefully we’ll see if we have votes for [Build Back Better] tonight and [the bipartisan infrastructure bill] tomorrow morning,” Pelosi said during a closed-door meeting with her vote-counting operations, according to a source familiar with her remarks.
The votes would come just two days after Democrats lost the race for governor in Virginia, where the party hadn’t come up short in a statewide race since 2009. Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy also only narrowly hung onto his seat in a race that wasn’t expected to be as competitive.
Pelosi acknowledged that Tuesday was “not a good night” for the party. And the Speaker, who had sought a vote on the infrastructure legislation last week only to be rebuffed by her liberal wing,
softly chided those progressives on Thursday, saying passage of that bill likely would have helped Democrats in state races across the country.
“It would have been better if we’d had it,” she said.more
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/580056-house-democrats-aim-for-thursday-vote-on-social-spending-package
