Infrastructure plan passed in Congress, Biden snatches success

By the admission of a Democratic official, this vote was a “clusterfuck”: a big mess. But after months of grueling negotiations, Nancy Pelosi offered Joe Biden success by pushing through a massive $ 1.2 trillion infrastructure investment plan in the House on Friday night. And she can say thank you to moderate Republicans.

It took 218 votes for Democrats to pass this plan. They got 228 to 206, thanks to the contribution of 13 decisive Republican votes, while 6 progressive Democrats rebelled. The approval of the law has been greeted with a round of applause, and Joe Biden will only have to sign it for it to come into force.

Social spending in favorable run-off

Joe Biden, who urgently needs to relaunch his presidency, hoped Friday morning to advance two major texts in the House of Representatives: this investment plan and a vast program to overhaul the social protection system and the fight against global warming valued at 1.750 billion dollars. In total, spending of some 3,000 billion over a decade.

The Democratic leaders had to give up a vote of approval of the second text, the centrist wing of the party demanding clarification of the costing. The moderate and progressive fringes of the party finally agreed on a procedural vote to start the parliamentary process.

Save the furniture

By adopting the only infrastructure program on Friday night, Democrats are saving the furniture despite the deep divisions running through their party. Joe Biden, faced with a decline in popularity one year before the mid-term parliamentary elections, assured that his vast social program should for his part be voted on by the House in the week of November 15 at the latest, before the Senate do not grab it.

The latter notably provides for nursery school for all, a profound improvement in health coverage and significant investments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – a real redefinition of the welfare state in the United States. But it is the subject of very difficult negotiations within the Democratic Party, between the left wing and the moderate camp. All day, Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has tried to get her troops in order, and to build support for the president’s plans.

Joe Manchin as referee

Biden’s trips to the Capitol, breakfasts with elected officials … The White House has spared no efforts in recent weeks to garner support. Because the US executive repeats it over and over again: the president’s spending programs are very popular with Americans. However, the Democrats will call into play in a year their narrow majority in Congress during parliamentary elections of mid-term, always perilous for the presidents in place.

But Joe Biden, who praised his negotiating skills during the presidential campaign because of his long career as a senator, stumbles on these internal disputes. And the president is not at the end of his sentences.

If it obtains the green light from elected officials in the Chamber after mid-November, its major social component will still have to be approved in the Senate, where it risks being significantly revised. Its fate is more particularly in the hands of an elected official from West Virginia, Senator Joe Manchin, who says he fears that the plan will further widen public debt and fuel inflation.

From Friday evening, however, he welcomed the adoption of the text on infrastructure, an unprecedented investment “for three decades”. In view of the very thin Democratic majority in the Senate, he virtually has a right of veto over presidential projects.