President Joe Biden on Saturday said he doesn’t plan to veto a bipartisan infrastructure bill if it comes without a reconciliation package, walking back a declaration last week that he would refuse to sign it unless the two bills came in tandem.
The comment angered some Republican lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said the president was threatening to veto the bipartisan deal in remarks on the Senate floor on Thursday.
“That statement understandably upset some Republicans, who do not see the two plans as linked,” the president said in a statement.
“My comments also created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent,” the president said.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers closed a deal on an infrastructure initiative Thursday following weeks of negotiations to craft a package that could get through Congress with Republican and Democratic support. The framework will include $579 billion in new spending to improve the country’s roads, bridges and broadband.
The second bill would include funding for Democrat-backed issues like climate change, childcare, health care and education, issues that administration officials have called “human infrastructure.” It would be passed through a Senate process called reconciliation, which doesn’t require Republican votes.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Thursday morning said the House would not take up either piece of legislation until both are passed through the Senate. Democrats can’t lose a single vote on a reconciliation bill in the evenly split chamber.
Biden said he will ask Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to schedule the infrastructure plan and the reconciliation bill for action in the Senate and expects them both to go to the House.
“Ultimately, I am confident that Congress will get both to my desk, so I can sign each bill promptly,” Biden said.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com
