Speaker Pelosi capitulates to the far-left: pushes back deadline to pass “bipartisan” infrastructure bill

It appears that the far-left has won the infrastructure battle.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) just pushed back the deadline to pass the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill to October 31st, Fox News reports. 

Pelosi conceded defeat in a statement that she released on Saturday.

“There is an October 31st Surface Transportation Authorization deadline, after last night’s passage of a critical 30-day extension,” she said. “We must pass [Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework] well before then – the sooner the better, to get the jobs out there.”

Pelosi’s embarrassing week

It was just over a week ago, during the last weekend in September, that Pelosi assured everyone that her U.S. House of Representatives would pass the $1.1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

With a group of bipartisan lawmakers already having passed the measure through the U.S. Senate and with the Democrats having a bigger majority in the House, how hard could it be right?

Well, last week ended with Pelosi sending this message out to House Democrats:

While great progress has been made in the negotiations to develop a House, Senate, and White House agreement on the Build Back Better Act, more time is needed to complete the task. Our priority to create jobs in the health care, family and climate agendas is a shared value. Our Chairs are still working for clarity and consensus. Clearly, the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill will pass once we have agreement on the reconciliation bill.

In other words, it turned out that Pelosi couldn’t get the job done.

Democrats divided

The deadline that Pelosi has now set for October 31st was originally set for last Monday. That is the day that Pelosi said the House would pass the bipartisan infrastructure package. House progressives, however, stopped that from happening.

Using the leverage that they have in the House, considering that a measure cannot pass without their support, the progressives threatened to tank the $1.1 trillion bill unless they got support for President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” proposal. Moderate Democrats, however, particularly the moderates in the Senate, refused to give in, and so nothing got passed.

Pelosi ended up changing the deadline from Monday to Thursday, from Thursday to Friday, and now from Friday to the end of the month, and it’s all because Pelosi couldn’t get her own House Democrats in order.

Are there any doubts left about who is calling the shots these days for the Democrats?

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