Some Dems Push Biden for Slimmed-Down BBB Focused on Climate Change
A group of some two dozen House Democrats running for reelection in competitive districts is pushing President Biden to focus efforts to revive the stalled Build Back Better Act on the $555 billion in climate investments that have already passed the House.
“We urge you in the strongest possible terms to move swiftly to finalize the most comprehensive legislation that can pass the Senate and get this historic progress to your desk for your signature in the coming weeks,” lawmakers led by Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) wrote in a letter to Biden Monday.
The letter “has been blessed by the League of Conservation Voters,” The Washington Post reports.
As the House and Senate return from recess this week and some Democrats push for quick action on whatever portions of the Build Back Better package can get the needed 50 votes in the Senate, the Biden domestic spending and climate plan remains clouded in uncertainty.
House progressives led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) have pressed Democrats to set March 1, the date of Biden’s first State of the Union address, as a deadline for Senate action.
But Democrats still don’t know exactly what holdout Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona will support, though both Biden and Manchin have indicated that the climate provisions should be the easiest to pass. “The climate thing is one that we probably could come to an agreement much easier than anything else,” Manchin said this month.
Still, the White House and congressional leaders have pushed back on the idea of a March 1 deadline. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday declined to set a firm date. “We don’t have a timetable,” she said. “We will pass the bill when we have the votes to pass the bill.”
The timing of any bill could be complicated by Justice Stephen Breyer’s decision to retire from the Supreme Court given that Biden and Democrats will want to confirm a replacement as quickly as they can. “At some point, that nomination process is going to consume all of the oxygen on Capitol Hill in the Senate,” Jim Manley, a former aide to the late Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (NV) told The Hill. “It doesn’t mean Build Back Better is done, but it’s just another problem that has to be dealt with.”
Also high on the list of priorities, lawmakers still need to pass another government funding bill by February 18.
Asked if she favors setting a new deadline, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), one of the signatories on Monday’s letter to Biden, responded with this zinger, Politico reports: “I think if Congress had a slogan kind of institutionally, it would be something like: 'Solving yesterday's problems tomorrow, maybe.'”