By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Progressive Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have enough votes to block a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has championed until agreement is reached on a larger social spending bill, their leader said on Thursday.
Emerging from a meeting of her 95-member Congressional Progressive Caucus after President Joe Biden’s visit https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-give-update-democrats-spending-plans-before-europe-trip-source-2021-10-28 to the Capitol, Representative Pramila Jayapal said her group supported Biden’s vision for a $1.75 trillion social spending and climate change bill, but not until they had seen detailed legislative language on it.
Progressives have long said they would not vote for the infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate with bipartisan support in August, until the details of the larger bill – once targeted at $3.5 trillion – were worked out.
“There are too many no votes for the vote to pass today,” Jayapal said. “We do need the text and we do need the vote on both bills in the House at the same time.”
Jayapal also said she was not rejecting a direct call for support from the president, noting that Pelosi and not Biden had called for a vote on Thursday.
“He did not,” Jayapal told reporters earlier. “He said he wants votes on both bills. And he said that what we do on these two bills is going to be determinative for how the world sees us.”
(Reporting by Richard Cowan; writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Scott Malone, Chris Reese and Paul Simao)
