After months of heated negotiation among Democrats, the House of Representatives on Friday night passed the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, which provides funding for …
After months of heated negotiation among Democrats, the House of Representatives on Friday night passed the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, which provides funding for everything from roads and bridges to electrical grids. A small but important sliver of the infrastructure bill could also be a possible salve to the digital divide. The vote, which largely fell along party lines, was 228-206. Thirteen Republicans joined 215 Democrats to pass the legislation, which will now head to President Joe Biden for signing. Six Democrats voted against the bill, because the larger social spending bill failed to gain enough support for a vote on Friday. The vote came after moderate Democrats assured progressive members of the party that they would vote for the larger Build Back Better Act, which focuses on social spending, when that bill comes up for a vote. For more than a month, Democrats have been at an impasse over two bills at the center of Biden’s domestic agenda, which had left in limbo the fate of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that the Senate passed in August. This legislation provides long-overdue funding to upgrade traditional infrastructure such as roads, bridges and electrical grids. But also included in the bill is $65 billion in federal funding for broadband investment. On one side of the debate are progressives in the House, led by Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, who had been threatening to sink the legislation if a much larger “human infrastructure” bill — which they say must include money for child care, paid leave, universal pre-K, community college, affordable housing, Medicare expansion and climate action — wasn’t passed via budget reconciliation in the Senate. On the other side are two moderate Senate Democrats — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — who have repeatedly said the $3.5 trillion price tag is too hefty. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California postponed a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill in late September, setting a new deadline of Oct.
