In the fight over if and when a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill would take place and whether it would be tied to a vote on President Joe Biden’s broader economic agenda, one fact was overlooked: House Democrats passed their own infrastructure bill in July. The reason you haven’t heard much about that measure is that the House acquiesced to the Senate’s demand that it vote on the Senate’s bill without amendment. In doing this, the House accepted a bill that not only omitted many progressive priorities but also had no input from its members.
If the irrelevance of the House in this negotiation were an unusual case, it may not be cause for concern. But this is the way most major laws have been made for the past decade: They are products of the Senate with little or no House involvement. This is because the House—whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans—now acts as if it were a unicameral legisla
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