Biden, party parley on spending
President looking to narrow inter-Democrat divisions
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden met with divided congressional Democrats on Wednesday in an attempt to broker a deal that would foster passage of trillions of dollars in economic spending initiatives.
Biden’s three meetings — with party leaders and with top members of its liberal and moderate factions — came five days before the House plans to take up an infrastructure package that will require the support of Democrats of all stripes.
Biden first conferred with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., while the White House’s communications team headed to Capitol Hill to huddle with other House Democrats. “We’re in good shape,” Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol after the hour-plus meeting.
The White House called the meetings “productive and candid” and said follow-up work would be immediately underway. Earlier in the day, press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House realized that with time growing short, “there needs to be deeper engagement by the president.”
Congress is racing toward Monday’s deadline for a House vote on the first part of Biden’s plan — a $1 trillion infrastructure measure — that now also serves as a deadline for producing a compromise framework for a broader $3.5 trillion package.
The party’s liberals are backing the broader spending bill, which proposes overhauls of the country’s health care, education, immigration and climate laws, along with a slew of new programs to help low-income Americans. Some centrists reject that price tag as exorbitant, but liberals say they won’t support the infrastructure bill without it, leaving Democratic leaders facing a dilemma.
At one point, Biden told the lawmakers there were plenty of conference rooms at the White House that they could use to hunker down this weekend as some suggested they roll up their sleeves and stay to get the final details done.
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a key centrist who has balked at the $3.5 trillion price tag, said the president told him to come up with a number he could live with.
“He just basically said, ‘Find it,’” Manchin said. “‘Just work on it; give me a number.’”
“The president is really fired up,” said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, after the evening’s final session.
Many Democrats in Congress have urged Biden to involve himself directly in these conflicts, but he has often preferred to let Pelosi and Schumer handle the details of negotiations. Asked about the burst of congressional outreach Wednesday, Psaki said the president “wants to hear from everybody on what they’re most excited about, what concerns they may have.”
After his initial session with Pelosi and Schumer, Biden met with centrists including Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, who helped negotiate Monday’s deadline for the infrastructure bill.
Gottheimer said all in the meeting had agreed on passing the infrastructure bill Monday and working on the bigger package.
The centrists’ meeting also included Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
But Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, issued a statement after another meeting with Biden reiterating that about 50 members plan to vote against the infrastructure measure unless it’s linked to the broader bill. She has said the two bills must move “in tandem” to win progressive votes.
All told, more than 20 lawmakers were invited to confer with Biden in the meetings, which stretched into the evening.
Democratic leaders have stressed to their rank-and-file members that they must stick together to deliver Biden’s economic agenda or risk having that agenda collapse. Some have warned about the optics if their own party takes down a Bidenbacked infrastructure proposal Monday on the House floor.
Liberals in the Senate, however, offered support to their House counterparts Wednesday, as 11 members led by Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called for the House to delay Monday’s infrastructure vote. “We voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill with the clear commitment that the two pieces of the package would move together along a dual track,” the lawmakers wrote. “Abandoning the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act and passing the infrastructure bill first would be in violation of that agreement.”
Information for this article was contributed by Tony Romm, Seung Min Kim and Marianna Sotomayor of The Washington Post; and by Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking, Alan Fram, Martin Crutsinger, Darlene Superville, Brian Slodysko and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press.