| House Reaches Agreement to Vote on Infrastructure Legislation House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reached an agreement with centrist Democrats on how to move forward on a vote to approve the Senate-passed infrastructure bill, H.R. 3684. The ten centrist Members threatened to vote against the budget resolution if a vote on the infrastructure bill was not scheduled, upending passage of any bills since the Speaker’s majority is a slim four votes. Under the agreement reached today, the House will vote to approve or “deem” a $3.5 trillion budget resolution, setting in motion to the process to develop and vote on the reconciliation funding package later in the fall. In exchange for this vote, the House would vote on Senate infrastructure bill on September 27. This agreement means, barring any last-minute changes to the Senate bill by the House, the final bill could reach the president’s desk by early October for signing into law. As to the pending matter of the $3.5 trillion “soft” infrastructure reconciliation effort, it remains unclear if the Senate has the 51 votes to approve the massive spending initiative. The provisions of this package would fund the remaining elements of the president’s Build Back Better Plan and has elicited strong concerns from a handful of Senate Democrats over the need to spend this amount of funding. |
