House Democrats delayed a vote on a major infrastructure bill, a sign of divisions within the party.
For more than a decade, congressional Democrats have been a notably unified and functional bunch. They responded forcefully to both the financial crisis that began in 2007 and the Covid-19 pandemic. They passed Barack Obama’s signature health care law, succeeding on an issue that had bedeviled Washington for decades. And they remained almost completely united against Donald Trump’s legislative agenda and attacks on democracy. But the era of productive Democratic unity is now in doubt — as is President Biden’s domestic agenda. This morning, I’ll explain last night’s developments on Capitol Hill and look at where things may go from here. Shortly before 11 p.m., Steny Hoyer of Maryland — the second-ranking Democrat in the House — announced that “no further votes are expected tonight,” an acknowledgment that the party did not have the votes to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been insisting throughout the day that the vote would happen. It was one of the few times in her almost two decades as the leader of House Democrats that she did not appear to be in control of her caucus, reminiscent of the chaos that has instead tended to surround House Republicans this century. “It’s a serious setback,” Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, told me, “but I don’t think it’s the end of the effort.” Perhaps the most surprising part of last night’s developments is that many analysts believe that congressional Democrats have made progress toward a deal over the past 24 hours — even if they are not there yet, and the talks could still collapse. The Senate has already passed the infrastructure bill, and Democrats overwhelmingly favor it. But House progressives have refused to vote for it without assurances that moderate Democrats also support the other major piece of Biden’s agenda — a larger bill (sometimes called a “safety net” bill) that would expand health care access and education, fight climate change and reduce poverty, among other measures. Progressives are worried that if they pass the infrastructure bill, moderates will abandon the safety-net bill, which is a higher priority for many Democrats. These are precisely the sort of disagreements that Democrats managed to surmount in recent years. During the debate over Obama’s health law, for example, moderates were worried about its size and ambition, while progressives were deeply disappointed about what it lacked (including an option for anybody to buy into Medicare). Yet nearly all congressional Democrats ultimately voted for the bill, seeing it as far preferable to failure.
