House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said Monday he does not anticipate the House staying in session next week to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Hoyer told the White House reporters that he does anticipate the House having to stay in session to pass any legislation that the Senate could pass; this includes the Senate bipartisan infrastructure bill, which Senate lawmakers and the Joe Biden White House hope to strike a deal as early as the end of Monday.
“The Senate is the Senate, and God knows when they’re going to do what they’re going to do. … I do anticipate leaving on Friday,” Hoyer said.
The House will go into recess at the end of Friday for several weeks for its August recess.
Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, and the Biden White House struck a tentative infrastructure in early June; however, the bipartisan infrastructure group has struggled to iron in the details required to get a filibuster-proof majority to pass the bill through the Senate.
The bipartisan infrastructure senators have missed every deadline they set, but hope to strike a deal Monday. However, Democrats offered a “global” proposal to fix the remaining issues, which enraged Senate Republicans involved in the negotiations.
A source told Punchbowl News that the global offer “goes against” the already agreed upon parts of the deal.
The source said, “The ‘global offer’ we received from the White House and Chuck Schumer was discouraging since it attempts to reopen numerous issues the bipartisan group had already agreed to.”
“If this is going to be successful, the White House will need to show more flexibility as Republicans have done and listen to the members of the group that produced this framework,” the source added.
A Democrat source then accused Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) of moving the “goalpost.”
“Bipartisan group/White House had an agreement to fully fund the Senate water bill + $15B in dedicated funding to address lead pipe water contamination issues. Romney reneged on deal and proposed something completely unworkable,” the Democrat source said.
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
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