The House set a deadline to vote on the infrastructure package in an effort to win over moderate Democrats who were opposed to voting on a massive budget resolution. Let’s look into this procedural move and what happens next for rural America.
The House passed the Rules Package governing the budget and infrastructure package, and it includes an important deadline.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that Congress will vote on infrastructure before critical highway and surface transportation funding expires on September 30th.
According to Speaker Pelosi, “By October 1st, we will hope to have in place--that is the plan-- to have in place the legislation for infrastructure that is bipartisan and I salute that, but it’s not inclusive of all the values we need to build back at a time when we have a climate crisis.”
The Speaker has been insistent on voting on infrastructure and the budget together, despite calls from both Republicans and moderate Democrats to pass infrastructure immediately.
“The Build Back [Better] budget agenda is one that is liberating for families, not just women, moms and dads, with child care, with child tax credit, with universal pre-K, with home health care, with workforce development. So, not only are we building physical infrastructure of America, but also the human infrastructure to enable many more people to participate in the success of our economy,” she explains.
Throughout the rules debate, Republican members expressed opposition to the high spending levels in the budget resolution.
“The legislation before us today that is included in this rule would leave rural communities behind, concentrate even more power at the federal level, and tax and spend recklessly,” Rep. Fischback states. “The President is too busy pressuring members of his own party to support $5 trillion dollars in spending to even address the crisis in Afghanistan.”
Democrats successfully passed the package with just an eight vote margin.
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