Biden hails infrastructure win as 'monumental step forward'
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Updated: 2 p.m.
President Joe Biden on Saturday hailed Congress' passage of his $1 trillion infrastructure package as a “monumental step forward for the nation" after fractious fellow Democrats resolved a months-long standoff in their ranks to finally seal the deal.
“Finally, infrastructure week," a beaming Biden told reporters. “I’m so happy to say that: infrastructure week.”
The House passed the measure 228-206 late Friday, prompting prolonged cheers from the relieved Democratic side of the chamber. Thirteen Republicans, mostly moderates, supported the legislation while six progressive Democrats — including Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri — opposed it.
Omar said she couldn't support the infrastructure bill without first voting on a larger social spending package — the Build Back Better Act.
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"Passing the infrastructure bill without passing the Build Back Better Act first risks leaving behind childcare, paid leave, health care, climate action, housing, education, and a roadmap to citizenship," Omar said in a statement.
Aside from Omar, Minnesota's congressional delegation voted along party lines with the three other Democrats supporting the bill and four Republicans opposed.
Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum issued a statement calling the infrastructure bill a "once-in-a-generation investment in our roads, bridges, and communities. It will help us maintain and improve our existing physical infrastructure, which Minnesotans know all too well is long overdue. It includes funding for clean energy innovation, electric vehicle infrastructure, transportation, and critical improvements to water infrastructure that will help protect public health."
McCollum called for swift passage of the Build Back Better Act and said it'd be "fully paid for by closing tax loopholes to ensure the wealthiest Americans and corporations finally pay their fair share."
Republican Rep. Pete Stauber issued a statement saying the infrastructure bill is "inextricably linked to (Democrats') bloated multi-trillion-dollar tax-and-spend package."
“This massive spending package is not about real infrastructure, and instead will make businesses less competitive, outsource jobs, saddle American families and future generations with more debt and higher taxes, send inflation soaring to greater heights, and completely devastate our economy," Stauber wrote.
A fact sheet from the White House said Minnesota would likely get billions from the infrastructure bill, including $4.5 billion for highways, $302 million for bridge repairs and replacement and more than $818 million over five years for public transportation. At least $100 million was expected for broadband in Minnesota.
‘On one big item, we delivered’
Approval of the infrastructure bill, which promises to create legions of jobs and improve broadband, water supplies and other public works, sends it to the desk of a president whose approval ratings have dropped and whose nervous party got a cold shoulder from voters in this past week’s off-year elections.
Democratic candidates for governor were defeated in Virginia and squeaked through in New Jersey, two blue-leaning states. Those setbacks made party leaders — and moderates and liberals alike — impatient to produce impactful legislation and demonstrate they know how to govern. Democrats can ill afford to seem in disarray a year before midterm elections that could result in Republicans regaining congressional control.
Biden said Saturday that the lesson of Tuesday's elections was that voters “want us to deliver,” adding that Friday's vote “proved we can.”
“On one big item, we delivered,” he added.
The infrastructure package is a historic investment by any measure, one that Biden compares in its breadth to the building of the interstate highway system in the last century or the transcontinental railroad the century before.
“This is a blue collar blueprint to rebuilding America,” he said in his White House remarks.
His reference to infrastructure week was a jab at his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose White House declared several times that “infrastructure week” had arrived, only for nothing to happen.
Simply freeing up the infrastructure measure for final congressional approval was like a burst of adrenaline for Democrats. Yet despite the win, Democrats endured a setback when they postponed a vote on the second, larger bill until later this month.
That 10-year, $1.85 trillion measure bolstering health, family and climate change programs was sidetracked after moderates demanded a cost estimate on the sprawling measure from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The postponement dashed hopes that the day would produce a double-barreled win for Biden with passage of both bills.
But in an evening breakthrough brokered by Biden and House leaders, five moderates later agreed to back that bill if the budget office's estimates are consistent with preliminary numbers that White House and congressional tax analysts have provided. The agreement, in which lawmakers promised to vote on the social and environment bill by the week of Nov. 15, stood as a significant step toward a House vote that could ultimately ship it to the Senate.
Clearly elated by the bill’s passage, Biden held forth at length with reporters for over a half hour Saturday morning, joking that his chances of getting the bill done had been written off multiple times before, only for him to be able to salvage it. He said he would wait to hold a signing ceremony until lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans who voted for it — return to Washington after a week-long recess.
The president acknowledged uncertainty surrounding his larger social and environmental spending package, saying “time will tell” whether he can keep popular provisions like universal paid family leave in the final version. He wouldn't say whether he has private assurances from moderate Democrats in the House and Senate to pass the nearly $2 trillion bill, but said he was “confident” he would get the votes.
“We will pass this in the House and we’ll pass it in the Senate," he said. Pressed on why he thought that, Biden said he had gotten to know lawmakers during the negotiations.
Biden predicted Americans would begin to feel the impact of the infrastructure bill “probably starting within the next two to three months as we get shovels in the ground. But the full impact of the legislation will probably take decades to be fully realized.
He added that he would visit some ports that would benefit from the legislation in the next week, as his administration tries frantically to ease supply chain disruptions that are raising prices on consumer goods before the holidays.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that for programs being expanded, it would be easy to spend the new money, but it would take longer to stand up new initiatives.
"There’s a pile of applications on my desk — figuratively speaking, they’re digital — but we’ve got about $10 billion worth of applications for a program that’s only got $1 billion in it," he told CNN. “This is not just a short term stimulus bill.”
Biden said the investment would be viewed in 50 years as “when America decided to win the competition of the 21st century” with a rising China.
The president and first lady Jill Biden delayed plans to travel Friday evening to their house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Instead, Biden spoke to House leaders, moderates and progressives.
In a statement, five moderates said that if the fiscal estimates on the social and environment bill raise problems, “we remain committed to working to resolve any discrepancies" to pass it.
In exchange, most liberals agreed to back the infrastructure measure, which they'd spent months holding hostage in an effort to press moderates to back the larger bill.
The day marked a rare detente between Democrats' moderate and liberal wings that party leaders hope will continue this fall. The rival factions had spent weeks accusing each other of jeopardizing Biden's and the party's success by overplaying their hands. But Friday night, Jayapal suggested they would work together moving forward.
Democrats have struggled for months to take advantage of their control of the White House and Congress by advancing their top priorities. That’s been hard, in part because of Democrats’ slender majorities and bitter internal divisions.
“Welcome to my world,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters. “We are not a lockstep party.”
Democrats’ day turned tumultuous early after a half-dozen moderates demanded the budget office's cost estimate of the sprawling package of health, education, family and climate change initiatives before they would vote for it.
Party leaders said that would take days or more. But with Friday’s delayed vote and lawmakers leaving town for a week’s break, those budget estimates should be ready by the time a vote is held.
The infrastructure measure cleared the Senate in August with bipartisan support.
As for the social and environment package, House passage would send it to the Senate, where it faces certain changes and more Democratic drama. That’s chiefly because of demands by Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to contain the measure’s costs.
Moderates have forced leaders to slash the roughly 2,100-page measure to about half its original $3.5 trillion size. Republicans oppose it as too expensive and damaging to the economy.
The package would provide large numbers of Americans with assistance to pay for health care, raising children and caring for elderly people at home. It has $555 billion in tax breaks encouraging cleaner energy and electric vehicles. Democrats added provisions in recent days restoring a new paid family leave program and work permits for millions of immigrants.
Much of the package’s cost would be covered with higher taxes on wealthier Americans and large corporations.
MPR News contributed to this report.