Outta here: Pelosi to jet to Europe as House stalls on $3T Biden plan
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is scheduled to lead a congressional delegation to Scotland for the UN Climate Summit COP26 this weekend, leaving Washington, DC, later Friday even as she struggles to unite Democratic support for President Biden’s agenda.
Last month, Pelosi’s trip to Glasgow was announced by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who said the trip was “to reiterate our commitment to the objectives that have been set forth in Paris and other places to obtain a very, very significant reduction in emissions,” Bloomberg reported.
Pelosi’s office declined to comment on the trip at the time due to security protocols.
For weeks, Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her whip team have been attempting to gather enough votes to pass a $1.75 trillion spending package and a Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill, and remained unsuccessful as of Friday, as some moderate Democrats cited the need for a scoring from the Congressional Budget Office — which would reveal the budgetary impacts of the spending package.
It is unclear if she is still set to fly to Europe this weekend as approximately five members are still holding out.
Early last month, Pelosi delivered the keynote address at the opening ceremonies of the Pre-COP26 Parliamentary Meeting in Rome.
“So when we meet in Glasgow next month, we must bring our highest ambitions to the table. We must not only meet our Paris goals, we must beat them in order to limit warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius. Again, parliaments working together, executive branches as well with parliaments,” she said at the time.
If the budget reconciliation, also known as the Build Back Better Act, is passed before the congressional delegation leaves Washington, Pelosi would be able to tout proactive climate action from the US, as the package includes approximately $555 billion for “clean energy and climate investments.”
Their visit to the summit comes only days after Biden returned from Scotland, where he touted the clean energy funds and said the US must “help much more than we have thus far” in combating the climate crisis.
It is unclear if a vote will happen Friday, given the hesitation from moderates and the push for CBO scoring — which could take weeks to finalize.
On Friday, Biden urged his party to pass the bills, telling reporters he planned to “make some calls.”
“I’m asking every House member — member of the House Representatives, to vote yes on both of these bills right now,” Biden said.
“Send the infrastructure bill to my desk, send the Build Back Better bill to the Senate. Let’s build on incredible economic progress. Build on what we’ve already done. And this will be such a boost when it occurs,” he added.
