Gonna 'Get It Done': Biden Says Dems in Congress Will Pass Infrastructure Bill, Does Not Matter When

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US President Joe Biden said that Democrats will manage to get the infrastructure bill passed in Congress regardless of whether they do it immediately or later on.

Biden met with congressional leaders, including US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said on Sunday that Democrats hope to pass the infrastructure bill by the end of the week. The legislation would provide well over $1 trillion in spending for infrastructure such as bridges, roads, electric vehicles, energy grids, and internet access.

"It doesn't matter when. It doesn't matter whether it's in 6 minutes, 6 days, or 6 weeks, we're going to get it done", Biden told reporters after meeting with the congressional Democratic leadership.

On his way out of Dem caucus meeting, Biden pauses for intense conversation with Pelosi before expressing confidence to press: “It doesn’t matter if it’s 6 minutes, 6 days or 6 weeks, we’re gonna get it done” pic.twitter.com/Dx2kQfIM1V

— Kate Riga (@Kate_Riga24) October 1, 2021

The infrastructure bill is one of several major efforts by congressional Democrats in recent days, with pushes to raise the debt ceiling and fund the federal government also at the forefront of their agendas. Republicans and Democrats came together on Thursday to fund the government through 3 December, but Senate Republicans have twice blocked efforts to raise the debt ceiling.

Republicans have criticised the bills as wasteful and having little to do with infrastructure but everything to do with political pet projects.

Although the funding of the government through December 3rd keeps most of the federal government from shutting down, several Department of Transportation agencies paid for by Congress through surface road funding authorisations ran out of money on Friday due to their funding being attached to the infrastructure bill.

A default, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, could cause a crisis of "enormous proportions".

Various economists have suggested that the debt ceiling, which does not measure the country's economic burden, be abolished once and for all to prevent successive governments from being imperiled by the politicisation of the inflexible statutory limit.

On a related point, Yellen said Thursday that the $28 trillion debt held by the United States was about 105% to US Gross Domestic Product. "That's a number that's higher than we've had during most of the post-war period in the United States, but it's not a number that I think is fiscally irresponsible or unsustainable", she said.