Democrats roll out $3.5 trillion budget to fulfill agenda
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats vowed on Wednesday to push through a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that would shepherd a transformative expansion of social and environmental programs into law, beginning an arduous drive to enact their vision for extending the reach of public education and health care, taxing the rich and trying to stem the warming of the planet.
The legislation is far from reality yet, but the details top Democrats have coalesced around are far-reaching. Prekindergarten would be universal for all 3- and 4-year-olds, two years of community college would be free, utilities would be required to produce a set amount of clean energy and prescription drug prices would be lowered. Medicare benefits would be expanded, and green cards would be extended to more immigrants in the country illegally.
At a closed-door luncheon in the Capitol, Biden rallied Democrats and the independents aligned with them to embrace the plan, which would require each of their votes to move forward over united Republican opposition. Yet crucial moderates had yet to tip their hands about whether they would welcome such an expansive proposal.
Biden’s message to senators, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, was that Democrats “need to be unified, strong, big and courageous.”
“We’re going to get this done,” Biden told reporters at the Capitol.
The Senate could begin advancing the plan in weeks, though a final vote could be months away and will face multiple hurdles. For now, Democrats and their independent allies insist they are together, even as moderates declined to commit to the package without further details.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who must ultimately get the package through a narrowly divided House, told Democrats in a letter on Wednesday: “This budget agreement is a victory for the American people, making historic, once-in-a-generation progress for families across the nation.”
Senate Democratic leaders have said they aimed to pass both the budget blueprint and a narrower, bipartisan infrastructure plan that was still being written, an extraordinarily complex and political charged endeavor in a 50-50 Senate.
“This is a moment in history when the United States needs to reassert itself in how we deal
with families, how we deal with our children, with the existential crisis of climate change and how we deal with China,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA., one of the key negotiators, told reporters Wednesday.
Combined with the infrastructure plan, the social spending is intended to deliver on Biden’s $4 trillion economic proposal. Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee must produce a budget resolution in the coming days that includes so-called reconciliation instructions to other Senate committees, which in turn will draft legislation detailing how the $3.5 trillion would be spent — and how taxes would be raised to pay for it.
That would pave the way for Democrats to produce a reconciliation bill this fall that would be shielded from a filibuster, allowing them to circumvent Republican opposition but requiring all 50 of their members — and a majority in the narrowly divided House — to pass it.
The reconciliation package would be stuffed with liberal priorities, including an expansion of Medicare to include dental, vision and hearing benefits, clean energy provisions, paid leave and home care — all paid for with tax increases on wealthy individuals and corporations.
In the private lunch, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, outlined the contours of the proposal and the directives it would lay out.
Democrats included the creation of a “civilian climate corps” to create jobs in addressing climate change and conservation, providing for child care, home care and housing investments.
They would also extend some temporary provisions from the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package, most notably monthly payments for all but the wealthiest families with children and expanded subsidies for Americans buying health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
Huge investments would go to renewable energy and a transformed electrical system to move the U.S. economy away from oil, natural gas and coal to wind, solar and other renewable sources. The budget blueprint is to include a clean energy standard, which would mandate the production of electricity driven by renewable energy sources, and would bolster tax incentives for the purchase of electric cars and trucks.
To fully finance the bill, it is expected to include higher taxes on overseas corporate activities to alleviate incentives for sending profits overseas, higher capital gains rates for wealthy individuals and higher taxes on large inheritances, and stronger tax law enforcement.
Moderate Democrats, who had balked at a progressive push to spend as much as $6 trillion on Biden’s entire economic agenda, largely declined to weigh in on the blueprint, saying they needed to see more than an overall spending number.
“We’ve got to get more meat on the bones for me,” Sen. Jon Tester, D-mont., told reporters. “I’ve got to get more information on what’s in it.”
The size of the blueprint could be shaped by the success or failure of the bipartisan infrastructure plan, which would devote nearly $600 billion in new spending to roads, bridge, tunnels and transit. The group of lawmakers negotiating that package has yet to release legislative text as they haggle over the details of how to structure and pay for the plan.
But some Republican negotiators conceded that the progress on the broader social spending bill intensified pressure on them to come to terms on the infrastructure plan. If Republicans cannot deliver enough votes to move the package past a filibuster, Democrats would just move it into the reconciliation plan and take away any chance for Republicans to shape it, said Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, one of the negotiators of the bipartisan bill.
“If we don’t pass infrastructure, they’re going to put even more infrastructure in than we have and worse policies,” said Portman, who fielded skepticism from his colleagues in a private Republican lunch on Tuesday. “It’s not just about spending. It’s about policy. That’s just the reality.”
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the centrist Democrat whose support might be determinative, released a noncommittal statement Wednesday, saying only: “I know my Democratic colleagues on the Budget Committee have worked hard, and I look forward to reviewing this agreement. I’m also very interested in how this proposal is paid for and how it enables us to remain globally competitive.”
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-ariz., another key moderate, also hung back Wednesday, when her office said she would decide whether to support the proposal based on what was included.
Still, the $3.5 trillion package had plenty in it to appeal to senior Democrats who were eager to use it to advance their longtime priorities. For Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the chairwoman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, it was an extension of a more generous child tax credit, as well as subsidies for child care, prekindergarten, and paid family leave.
For Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT., the Budget Committee chairman, it was Medicare and climate provisions.
“Finally, we are going to have America in the position of leading the world in combating climate change,” he said, calling the package “by far the most significant effort this country has ever seen” to combat climate change.