Dems scramble on $1.75T bill ahead of Thanksgiving deadline
House Democratic leaders set an aggressive schedule this week for President Biden’s $1.75 trillion social spending bill, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said must be passed if they want to go home for Thanksgiving.
The plan currently is that the debate will begin on Wednesday and the vote to pass it on Thursday.
One source inside the House Democratic Caucus’ Tuesday meeting told The Post that Pelosi (D-Calif.) had vowed that members would not leave Washington until the Build Back Better bill is passed.
Moderate Democrats say they won’t support the measure if there isn’t a complete report by the Congressional Budget Office on how the bill provision are paid and projected inflation impact projections. Leaders hope that the already released scoring of the nonpartisan agency will be sufficient to unite centrists behind the measure.
The full bill report will not be available until Friday.
Democrats have pushed back the timeline for the bill’s passage multiple times as the party factions struggle to come to a consensus on what the whole party could support.
Steny Hogue (D-Md.), House Majority leader. According to reporters, he believes that work on the bill will be done before the end the week.
“I hope to vote on it as soon as Thursday, but perhaps on Friday. We’re going to get it done this week,” he told reporters Tuesday, adding that floor activity could spill into Saturday.
One Democratic source told The Post they think it probable that members’ work weeks will slip into the weekend, adding it could be a “Groundhog Day”-like scenario in which a final vote gets pushed back as details change and are ironed out.
CBO is expecting to score that an increase in IRS enforcement would result significantly lower than the White House projections of $400 billion. Biden and other administration officials have insisted that the social spending bill is fully paid for, with the president himself saying the measure costs “zero dollars.”
Should the bill pass the House, it is expected to be amended or shot down in the Senate, with moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) sounding alarm bells over multiple provisions and its potential impact on inflation.
Manchin addressed Tuesday’s impact of the price rises on his constituents. telling CNN that he is “very much concerned.
“Inflation has hit them extremely hard. … I hear it when I go to the grocery story … They say, ‘Are you as mad as I am?’” Manchin said. “And I say, ‘Absolutely.’”
Labor Department last week announced that their October Consumer Price Index had increased by 6.2 percentage over the prior year. This is the highest 12-month rise since 1990.