AOC Insists: No Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan without $3.5T Partisan Spending Bill
District of Columbia | August 1, 2021
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insisted Sunday that the House should not pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill absent a much-larger partisan spending package, claiming she and progressive allies have “more than enough” votes to kill the former unless the latter passes too.
The comments further conflict with any suggestion that the two bills might be considered on separate tracks, as some Republican negotiators had hoped.
The former bill, a roughly $1 trillion version of the original $4 trillion plan President Biden pitched as part of his “Build Back Better” agenda, includes provisions for transportation, broadband Internet, and clean-water systems. The latter, costing $3.5 trillion, would fund many of the Biden administration’s domestic legislative priorities, namely on climate change, health care, and family-service programs.
“It was made very clear at the beginning of this process that this bipartisan deal, if it even survives the Senate, the only chance that it has at passing the House is if the House passes the Senate bill and if the Senate passes the House bill, which is largely in reconciliation,” AOC said on CNN’s State of the Union…. (Excerpts from the National Review)