As negotiations over President Joe Biden‘s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill drags on, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday said that funding for the extension of a California transit line and The Seaway International Bridge from New York to Canada will be pulled from the package.
On Friday evening, the House passed the economic relief bill, called the American Rescue Plan, largely along party lines in a 219-212 vote. The sprawling package included $1.4 billion to strengthen transit rail infrastructure such as extending a line from San Jose to Santa Clara—known as the Bay Area Rapid Transit—and $1.5 million to fund the international crossing connecting the U.S. to Ontario, Canada.
Pelosi’s office told CNN on Tuesday that those provisions will be removed as Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has decided that they cannot be included.
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The pandemic has had “an immediate and overwhelming effect on all of our transportation systems and the millions of transportation and construction jobs associated with them,” said Pelosi spokesperson Drew Hammill. He also suggested that Republicans could struggle to oppose the bill now that the two projects have been taken out.
The House-passed relief bill is now with the Senate, where Republicans are expected to offer numerous amendments in the coming days or weeks. The removal of the two projects and any other successful amendments will then be sent back to the House for a final vote.
Senate Republicans have vowed to oppose the overall stimulus package for being too costly, untargeted and including allegedly unnecessary measures. At a Tuesday press briefing, McConnell called the package “wildly expensive” and warned Democrats that the GOP will fight it “in every way that we can.”
With the Senate evenly divided and Vice President Kamala Harris with the tie-breaking vote, Democrats in the upper chamber must unanimously vote for the package in order to pass it using the budget process called reconciliation.
Pelosi last month indicated that Democrats were aiming to pass the stimulus package by the end of February. Amid continued delays, Biden held a virtual conference call earlier today with moderate Senate Democrats, where he urged them to unify and rally around the bill. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia reiterated Biden’s message to reporters afterward as: “This is really important. Democrats stick together. Let’s get this done.”
However, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has been trying to push party leaders into lowering the income threshold for the $1,400 direct payments and decreasing the weekly federal unemployment benefits from $400 to $300. It is currently unclear whether Manchin would vote for the package without those amendments.
Newsweek reached out to Manchin’s office for comment.
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