Editorial StaffThe Senate on Tuesday passed a $1 trillion infrastructure package, sending the provision to improve the nation’s roads, bridges and broadband to the House for approval.
But progressive Democrats in the House, eager to make good on campaign promises ahead of the 2022 midterms, could pose a new set of hurdles to the bipartisan infrastructure plan.
Progressives aren’t expected to make dramatic changes to the infrastructure bill, but they insist that the Senate first pass a separate $3.5 trillion budget resolution focused on poverty, climate change and health care.
The House was expected back from its recess Sept. 20, but later Tuesday House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the chamber would return Aug. 23 to consider the bigger spending plan.
The infrastructure proposal is the product of months of haggling between Republicans and Democrats and includes more than $500 billion above projected federal spending on upgrading the country’s transportation systems.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., praised the bipartisan work in remarks moments before the bill’s passage.
“It’s been a long and winding road, but we have persisted and now we have arrived,” Schumer said from the floor. “The American people will now see the most robust injection of funds into infrastructure in decades.”
The bipartisan bill strengthens “every major category of our country’s physical infrastructure,” he added. “Today, the Senate takes a decades-overdue step to revitalize America’s infrastructure, and give our workers, our businesses, our economy the tools to succeed in the 21st century.”
The 2,700-page infrastructure bill now makes its way to the House, where some progressives have said that they won’t support it until the Senate passes the separate $3.5 trillion bill that tackles poverty, climate change and health care.
Schumer brought up the budget resolution immediately after the infrastructure bill’s passage and before the Senate headed to recess this week. The chamber early Tuesday afternoon voted along party lines, 50-49, to proceed with the resolution.
The Senate is set to return for a few days Sept. 13 and then for a longer period starting Sept. 20.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has backed that position and said she won’t bring up the infrastructure bill in her chamber until the Senate passes the sprawling budgetary proposal.
Source: CNBC
