The speaker said “we’re on a path to win the votes,” just as her No. 2 Democrat said he wasn’t confident the bill would pass.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday declared she had no plans to delay a high-profile vote on President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill, even as members of her leadership team bluntly warned the vote could fail. Pelosi told reporters a half-dozen ways that Democrats were muscling ahead with the vote despite mounting progressive threats to tank the bill without a clear path forward for the party’s separate — but politically linked — safety net bill. “We’re on a path to win the votes. I don’t want to even consider any options but that,” Pelosi told a packed room of reporters. “Think positively.” Meanwhile, the No.2 House Democrat, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, was more candid about leadership’s struggle to secure the votes for a vote Thursday. Asked by a separate group of reporters whether he had confidence the bill would pass, Hoyer replied “nope.” But he didn’t rule it out entirely, saying the possibility of the legislation reaching the floor was “still being worked on.” Most Democrats in the caucus acknowledge it would take an enormous political breakthrough for Pelosi and her leadership team to lock down the votes for the infrastructure bill’s passage, and senior Democrats believe without that shift a delay is inevitable.
