Democrats signal a deal on domestic policy bill is not at hand
WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders and White House officials were racing Wednesday to resolve a number of key disagreements on their expansive social safety net and climate bill before President Joe Biden departs today for Europe, even as some lawmakers signaled they may not be able to agree on a framework by the end of the day.
“I don’t think so,” Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, chair of the Budget Committee, said when asked if a deal could be struck Wednesday, noting lingering disputes over how to pay for the plan. “I’m not quite clear. In terms of the revenue package, every sensible revenue option seems to be destroyed.”
White House officials met Wednesday morning with Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Capitol Hill for more than an hour, a day after the two Democratic holdouts met privately with Biden at the White House. An administration official said the evening meeting had yielded progress but did not offer specifics, and other Democrats expressed optimism that they could soon agree to an outline.
Before the meeting Wednesday morning, Manchin told reporters that “we owe it to the president to move forward,” but he signaled that it would take time before the package would be ready for a vote. He also denounced a proposed plan to tax billionaires as a way of paying for the bill.
“I don’t like the connotation that we’re targeting different people,” he said.
White House officials and party leaders have already agreed to significantly whittle down the initial $3.5 trillion budget blueprint Democrats muscled through this year, and the package is now expected to total roughly half its original size. A number of issues remain unresolved —
including the inclusion of a federal paid family and medical leave program, a push to expand Medicaid and Medicare, and how to fully finance the package.
Biden — who is set to leave today for a trip to Rome for the Group of 20 summit and then a United Nations climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland — hopes to use the plan as evidence of a U.S. commitment to combating climate change as he pushes for a stronger global response.
Top Democrats hope that a compromise on the plan — which is now expected to spend at least $1.5 trillion to address climate change, universal prekindergarten, health care and federal support for child care and home care — could also help pave the way for a House vote on a Senate-passed $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package.
Progressives have repeatedly refused to support that package until after a vote on the far more expansive plan, which Biden calls his Build Back Better agenda. Without passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill by Sunday, lawmakers will have to take up a stopgap bill to avoid the expiration of transportation programs included in the measure.
In a private meeting with her top deputies, Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised that “in the next couple of hours, I will be communicating with you on our path from here to there,” according to a person familiar with the remarks, who disclosed them on condition of anonymity.
Those steps, she added, would be determined “depending on what happens at the White House.” But she acknowledged that for the infrastructure bill to pass, “we need to have the trust, the confidence and the reality of the Build Back Better bill.”
Because Republicans are unanimously opposed to the domestic policy measure, Democrats must keep all 50 senators and all but three House members in their caucus on board with the legislation. They are using a special budget process known as reconciliation to shield the package from a Senate filibuster and allow it to pass on a simple majority vote.