A group of House Democrats are urging President Joe Biden to work with the Senate in passing the House-passed climate change portion of the Build Back Better Act in the coming weeks, according to CNBC.
”In the two months since the House passed the Build Back Better Act, mid-December tornadoes killed at least 78 people in Kentucky and late December wildfires destroyed 1,000 homes in Colorado,” a group of Democratic swing state representatives wrote in a letter this week.
”The time for you to work with the Senate to finalize and pass the strongest and most comprehensive version of the Build Back Better Act that can get 50 Senate votes is right now.”
Earlier this month, Biden said he would likely have to break portions of the bill up in order to get it passed.
”I’m confident we can get pieces, big chunks of the Build Back Better law signed into law,” the president said. ”So I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now and come back and fight for the rest of it.”
But passing the climate change provisions in the Senate may not be so easy, given West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s previous opposition to the $2.2 trillion version of the bill in December. In addition, Manchin has said no formal talks are on the way to pass this version of the bill.
”We always start at scratch, but things have changed since then,” Manchin said.
Last week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration had not set a deadline for passing the bill.
