President Joe Biden celebrated the final House passage of his $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill at the White House on Saturday, 88 days after it passed the Senate.
“Finally. Infrastructure week!” Biden chuckled, parroting a Washington, DC, joke about former President Donald Trump’s repeated failed attempts to get an infrastructure package passed in Congress.
“We did something that’s long overdue, that long has been talked about in Washington but never actually been done,” Biden added.
Vice President Kamala Harris also attended the event but did not speak:
US President Joe Biden gestures after delivering remarks on the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal and the rule that will allow the passage of the Build Back Better Act as US Vice President Kamala Harris looks on in the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, DC on November 6, 2021 (ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images).
The president said he would not sign the bill passed late Friday night so that more members of Congress could attend the signing ceremony.
“I’m not doing it this weekend because I want people who work so hard, Democrats and Republicans, to be here,” Biden said, referring to the senators who helped hammer out the deal in the first place.
The president plans to leave later today to spend the rest of the weekend at his home in Delaware.
Biden hinted at Democrat losses in the elections on Tuesday, admitting that the message sent by voters was that they wanted Democrats to get things done.
“The American people have made clear one overwhelming thing … all the talk about the elections and what do they mean. They want us to deliver. They want us to deliver,” he said.
Despite supporting congressional leftists and their struggle to approve more spending, Biden ultimately abandoned his efforts to get his multitrillion-dollar entitlement bill passed in tandem.
The president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally pushed the bill across the finish line on their third attempt to get it through the Democrat-led House of Representatives.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Leftists in the House Progressive Caucus finally caved after weeks of holding the infrastructure legislation hostage until Biden’s entitlement bill passed.
Ultimately, six leftist Democrats still voted against it as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) described the process as “bullshit.”
But 13 Republicans helped bail out Pelosi and Biden by supporting the bill.
The Congressional Budget Office has projected that Biden’s infrastructure bill will add $256 billion in deficits over ten years.
The future of Biden’s entitlement bill remains even more in doubt as leftists no longer have any leverage to push it through the House.
But Biden tried to signal optimism, calling it “fiscally responsible” and saying the bill would not add to the deficit “by a single penny.”
“Let me be clear: We will pass this in the House. And we will pass it in the Senate,” he said.
Asked what gave him confidence that the bill would pass, Biden grinned broadly and replied, “Me.”
Source: Breitbart
