Deal on Biden’s agenda near
Harris ‘confident’ that negotiations will soon be settled
WASHINGTON — A deal within reach, President Joe Biden and Congress’ top Democrats edged close to sealing their giant domestic legislation, though the informal deadline appeared to slip as they worked to scale back the measure and determine how to pay for it.
Negotiations were expected to continue into the weekend, all sides indicating just a few issues remained unsettled in the sweeping package of social services and climate change strategies.
Biden met at the White House on Friday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer joined by video call from New York, trying to shore up details. The leaders have been working with party moderates and progressives to shrink the once$3.5 trillion, 10-year package to around $2 trillion in child care, health care and clean energy programs.
Pelosi said a deal was “very possible.”
She told reporters back at the Capitol that more than 90% of the package was agreed to: The climate change components of the bill “are resolved,” but outstanding questions remained on health care provisions.
Vice President Kamala Harris sounded even more certain. She said tensions often rise over final details but “I am confident, frankly — not only optimistic, but I am confident that we will reach a deal.”
No agreement was announced by Friday’s self-imposed deadline to at least agree on a basic outline. Biden wants a deal before he leaves this week for global summits in Europe.
Pelosi hoped the House could start voting as soon as this week, but no schedule was set.
Sticking points appear to include proposed corporate tax hikes to help finance the plan and an effort to lower prescription drug costs that has raised concerns from the pharmaceutical industry. Democrats are in search of a broad compromise between the party’s progressives and moderates on the measure’s price tag, revenue sources and basic components.
At the White House, the president has “rolled up his sleeves and is deep in the details of spreadsheets and numbers,” press secretary Jen Psaki said.
Biden was to spend the weekend at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Psaki compared the work to starting Social Security and other major federal programs decades ago, then building on them in following years.
Negotiations are proceeding as Biden more forcefully appeals to the American public, including in a televised town hall, for what he says are the middle-class values at the heart of his proposal.
In a Senate that is evenly divided between the Democrats and firmly opposed Republicans, Biden can’t afford to lose a single vote. He is navigating his own party’s factions — progressives, who want major investments in social services, and centrists, who prefer to see the overall price tag go down.
Still, he expressed optimism about the process.
On one issue — the taxes to pay for the package — the White House idea seemed to be making headway with a new strategy of abandoning plans for reversing Trump-era tax cuts in favor of an approach that would involve imposing a 15% corporate minimum tax and also taxing the investment incomes of billionaires to help finance the deal.
Biden has faced resistance from key holdouts, in particular Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who has not been on board with her party’s plan to undo President Donald Trump’s tax breaks for big corporations and individuals earning more than $400,000 a year.
The president was unusually forthcoming Thursday night about the sticking points in the negotiations with Sinema and another Democrat, conservative Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
While the president said Sinema opposed raising “a single penny in taxes” on the wealthy or corporations, a White House official later clarified that the president was referring to raising the top tax rates, not the range of tax proposals “which Sen. Sinema supports.”
If so, that could unlock a key piece of a deal. With a better understanding of the revenues available, Democrats can then develop a topline amount of spending for the package, and adjust the duration and sums for various programs accordingly.
Biden said Manchin doesn’t want to “rush” the transition to clean energy so quickly it will result in major job losses in his coal-producing state.
The newly proposed tax provisions have rankled Democrats who have long campaigned on scrapping the Republican-backed tax cuts that many believe unduly reward the wealthy and cost the government untold sums in lost revenue at a time of gaping income inequality.
Under the changes being floated the 21% corporate rate would not change, nor would the top individual rate of 39.6% on those earning $400,000, or $450,000 for couples.
However, the White House is reviving the idea of a corporate minimum tax rate that would hit even companies that say they had no taxable income — a frequent target of Biden, who complains they pay “zero” in taxes.