Infrastructure bill, Build Back Better Act votes scrapped for Thursday

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House: “Any sign of progress is always good for the public when they understand what it is, and I think they understand infrastructure pretty well. So it would have been better if we had. I don’t know because I haven’t seen the data (on the elections), perhaps you have. I think there are other issues at work in that election, and it remains not for me to make an observation unsubstantiated by data and science and fact. I’m very scientific about elections, district by district, within the district, region by region. And we’ll see what that is. But it was not a good night. So let’s just not go away from that.”

Reporter: “Do you think Democrats were penalized for having not gotten these things done?”

Pelosi: “Again, I haven’t seen all of the analysis, and I know from my own experience that as I’ve said to you before, the plural of anecdote is not data. Let’s see what the data is as it comes out. But there’s no question, if we, the more results we can produce in a way that people understand in their lives, the better it is.”

“But without saying what impact it had, it’s always a positive message to have results that are understood by the public.”

Reporter: “Is it possible that you might just vote on the infrastructure bill, considering everybody seems to be bought in and saying it’s ready for a vote?”

Pelosi: No.

Reporter: “OK, so do you anticipate a vote on Build Back Better today and what are the big hurdles you have to overcome?”

Pelosi: “I’ll let you know as soon as I wish to. But we’re… (laughter) You’re just worried about your own schedule, I know. I know that. But the fact is, is that our members are engaged in very thoughtful deliberation with each other. As I said to you before, 90% of this bill has been agreed to House, Senate, White House and written. We made some changes since last week. People need to familiarize themselves with it. That was the purpose of our meeting this morning. As I said, it made me very proud and was inspired by just once again hearing the depth of knowledge and breadth of vision of our colleagues. And we’ll let you know, but we, I think many of you know, I was really very unhappy about not passing the BIF (bipartisan infrastructure framework) last week. I really was very unhappy because we had an October 31st deadline, and I thought that that was eloquent, but not enough, I guess. So now we’re going to we’re going to pass both bills, but in order to do so, we have to have votes for both bills and that’s where we are.”