Democrats near deal to break budget impasse

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a band of Democratic centrists are finalizing a deal that would clear the way for passage of the party’s $3.5 trillion budget framework and set a Sept. 27 House vote on infrastructure — an offer both sides hope will end their weekslong standoff.

After several hours of furious negotiating Monday night, Pelosi and her team are close to announcing the compromise, which they hope to put on the floor as soon as Tuesday afternoon, according to several people familiar with discussions. Most, if not all, of the recalcitrant moderates — led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J..) — were expected to accept the deal and back the budget blueprint on the floor later Tuesday, though terms are not yet finalized.

Gottheimer and his centrist allies, including Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), huddled Tuesday in the ceremonial office of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer in the final hours before the vote to hash out the final details.

Besides the date to vote on the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill before October, moderates privately say they are securing firmer commitments from Democratic leadership on the party’s next step, a sprawling $3.5 trillion social spending bill. The Gottheimer and Murphy group has pushed for guarantees that the final product will be closely coordinated with their Senate counterparts, to avoid a tough House vote on a package that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) would never support.

Earlier Tuesday morning, Pelosi and Hoyer both signaled to their caucus that they believed an agreement was imminent.

“I’m sorry that we couldn’t land the plane last night, and that you all had to wait. But that’s just part of the legislative progress," Pelosi told the caucus in a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning. "I think we’re close to landing the plane.”

The House is expected to take its first vote shortly after 1 p.m. That tally will be structured so that Democrats automatically adopt their party’s budget blueprint.

“These negotiations are never easy,” said House Rules Chair Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) as he prepared to tee up the vote. “I say it takes a therapist. But the therapy session is done.”

The dealmaking, which spilled over past midnight on Monday, has escalated tensions across the caucus.

Many rank-and-file members of the Democratic caucus are furious at Gottheimer and his group of centrists, who have halted progress on the centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s social spending plans over their insistence the bipartisan infrastructure bill receive a vote first.

“Like in any family, people have different views until the family comes together, so that’s what we’re doing today,” Rep. Joyce Beatty, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said before a caucus meeting Tuesday. “We’re not that far apart. It is a procedural [obstacle] more than the actual legislative process.”

And Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) told reporters that “when people write op-eds and things like that, it becomes harder to walk back their words." Neal’s words likely referenced Murphy, a moderate who announced in a Monday op-ed that she was opposed to moving ahead on the budget framework without first voting on the infrastructure bill.

Pelosi and senior Democrats toiled in the Capitol until the wee hours of Monday morning attempting to break the impasse. Lawmakers hope to wrap up their efforts and leave town for the remainder of August as soon as Tuesday.

Frustrations among the broader Democratic caucus over the moderate intransigence spilled out during an emotional, closed-door meeting Monday where Hoyer called the internal fighting “mutually assured destruction.”

"We cannot squander this majority and this Democratic White House by not passing what we need to do," Pelosi said during the Monday meeting. "Right now, we have an opportunity to pass something so substantial for our country, so transformative we haven’t seen anything like it."

The digging-in by moderates came as a surprise to many on Capitol Hill who expected Gottheimer’s group to ultimately cave to Pelosi’s strategy. The centrist resistors even saw their ranks grow when Murphy vowed not to move forward with a Democratic-only reconciliation push until the House considered the bipartisan infrastructure bill on the floor.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

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