The U.S. House of Representatives returns to Capitol Hill on Monday evening in a rare interruption of its August recess as Democrats attempt to push through a number of President Joe Biden’s legislative priorities.
The House plans to vote Monday evening to set up future debate on three specific items: The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill which passed the Senate earlier this month, a budget resolution that would set the stage for a $3.5 trillion spending measure to fund education, environment and other safety net programs, and a bill to restore the power of the Voting Rights Act named for the late Rep. John Lewis.
Democratic leaders hope the vote will be just a two-day affair, as the quick approval of a budget resolution could set up full passage of legislation directing $3.5 trillion at safety net, environment and other programs as early as this fall.
The path forward is unclear for the budget and the two bills, as resistance from both moderate Democrats and Republicans have presented a number of hurdles for Democratic leaders.
Here is what House lawmakers are looking at on Monday:
FY2022 budget resolution
The House Rules Committee will attempt to approve a budget for fiscal year 2022 in hopes to clear a path for future passage of Biden’s $3.5 trillion, 10-year social and environment package.
But a group of nine moderate Democrats have threatened to oppose the budget resolution unless the House first approves a $1 trillion, 10-year package of road, power grid, broadband and other infrastructure projects that’s already passed the Senate.
With unanimous Republican opposition expected to the fiscal blueprint, moderates’ nine votes would be more than enough to sink it in the narrowly divided House.
The moderates want Congress to quickly send the bipartisan infrastructure measure to Biden so he can sign it before the political winds shift. That would nail down a victory they could tout in their reelection campaigns next year.
Led by New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer, the group is concerned that the longer a vote on the $1 trillion package takes, the less likely it will be for a commitment to traditional infrastructure to come to fruition.
“Some have suggested that we hold off on voting for the infrastructure package,” Gottheimer wrote in an op-ed for NJ.com published Monday. “But, if we do that, there is a real risk that it may never become law. The House can’t afford to wait months or do anything that will jeopardize passing this infrastructure bill or losing the bipartisan support behind it.”
But House leaders have made clear they do not intend to comply with the group’s requests.
Instead, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said in a conference call among House Democrats that he’d like the chamber to approve the budget resolution on Tuesday, according to a participant in the call who spoke on condition of anonymity.
And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a weekend letter to Democratic members of the House that it was critical to pass the budget resolution this week and that any delay threatens the timetable for delivering “the transformative vision that Democrats share.”
“It is essential that our Caucus proceeds unified in our determination to deliver once-in-a-century progress for the children,” she wrote.
$1 trillion infrastructure package
The Senate approved a $1 trillion infrastructure plan for states coast to coast in early August, a scaled-down version of Biden’s initial $2.3 trillion proposal that focuses on traditional infrastructure needs.
In all, 19 Republicans joined Democrats to pass the slimmed-down package to show they, too, could deliver and the government could function — and in anticipation of a lengthier fight over the $3.5 trillion proposal
In its final form, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act swelled to a 2,700-page bill backed by the president and also business, labor and farm interests.
The measure includes nearly $550 billion in new spending over five years in addition to current federal authorizations for public works that will reach virtually every corner of the country — a potentially historic expenditure Biden has put on par with the building of the transcontinental railroad and Interstate highway system.
There’s money to rebuild roads and bridges, and also to shore up coastlines against climate change, protect public utility systems from cyberattacks and modernize the electric grid. Public transit gets a boost, as do airports and freight rail. Most lead drinking water pipes in America could be replaced.
The bill would also provide $65 billion for broadband, a provision Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, negotiated because she said the coronavirus pandemic showed that such service “is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity.” States will receive money to expand broadband and make it more affordable.
Unlike the $3.5 trillion second package, which would be paid for by higher tax rates for corporations and the wealthy, the bipartisan measure is to be funded by repurposing other money, including some COVID-19 aid.
Pelosi so far has pledged to only consider a vote on the $1 trillion package in conjunction with the budget resolution.
John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act
House Democrats are looking to update the landmark Voting Rights Act with what they hope will be swift passage of H.R. 4, also known as the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021.
The bill is named after the famed civil rights activist, who passed away last year.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama, seeks to restore a key provision of the federal law that compelled states with a history of discrimination to undergo a federal review of changes to voting and elections. The Supreme Court set aside the formula that decided which jurisdictions were subject to the requirement in a 2013 decision and weakened the law further in a ruling this summer.
The push comes at a time when a number of Republican-led states have passed laws tightening rules around voting, particularly mail ballots. Democrats have sounded the alarm about the new hurdles to voting, comparing the impact on minorities to the disenfranchisement of Jim Crow laws, but they have struggled to unite behind a strategy to overcome near-unanimous Republican opposition in the Senate.
A companion bill pushed by Democrats, known as the For the People Act, has stalled in the Senate amid Republican opposition and disagreement among Democrats about whether to change procedural rules in the evenly divided Senate to get it passed.
The Biden administration has repeatedly voiced its support for the bill, writing in a statement released Monday that the “right to vote freely, the right to vote fairly, the right to have your vote counted is fundamental.”
“In an essay published shortly after he died, Congressman John Lewis wrote, ‘Democracy is not a state. It is an act[.],” the White House added. “This bill not only bears his name, it heeds his call.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
