Moderate Dems demand quick passage of infrastructure bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — Moderate House Democrats say they would sink a crucial fiscal blueprint outlining $3.5 trillion in social and environment spending unless a separate infrastructure bill is approved first, a new complication for the divided party's drive to enact President Joe Biden's domestic agenda.

The centrists' threat directly defies House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's announced plans, and she is initially showing no signs of backing down. It also completes a two-sided squeeze on the California Democrat, who has received similar pressure from her party's progressives.

Democrats can only pass legislation in the narrowly divided House if they lose no more than three votes. Solid Republican opposition seems certain.

“We will not consider voting for a budget resolution until the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passes the House and is signed into law,” nine centrists wrote in a letter to Pelosi obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

Ultimate House passage of the budget resolution seems certain because without it, Senate Republicans would be able to use a filibuster, or procedural delays, to kill a follow-up $3.5 trillion measure bolstering social safety net and climate change programs. That measure, not expected until autumn, represents the heart of Biden's domestic agenda.

Pelosi has repeatedly said the House will not vote on the $1 trillion package of road, rail, water and other infrastructure projects until the Senate sends the House the companion $3.5 trillion bill.

Pelosi has set that sequence because her party’s progressives have worried that if the infrastructure bill is approved first, moderates unhappy with the separate $3.5 trillion measure’s cost would feel free to vote against it, causing its defeat.

A senior House Democratic aide said the...