WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden arrived at Capitol Hill on Wednesday to rally Senate Democrats around his two-part plan to finance a major expansion of the social safety net and invest in the nation’s outdated infrastructure.
The president’s visit to the Capitol marks a major advancement in negotiations after Senate Democratic leaders agreed on a $3.5 trillion spending package Tuesday night. Biden hopes to pass the Democratic plan via budget reconciliation in tandem with the roughly $580 billion bipartisan infrastructure agreement.
“We’re going to get this done,” Biden said as he arrived at the Capitol.
The two proposals together make up Biden’s “American Jobs Plan” and “American Families Plan” that he unveiled earlier this year. The president has broadly referred to these agenda items as his “infrastructure” proposals.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged that Biden’s decision to go to the Capitol on Wednesday was a sign that all 50 Senate Democrats were not yet onboard.
“If there were enough votes for each of these priorities there would be a vote and it would have happened,” she said, adding that Biden would continue discussions with lawmakers in the coming days and was open to some changes being made to the $3.5 trillion proposal.
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Senate Democratic leaders hope to advance the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the party-line bill this month before Congress leaves for the August recess, but they face significant challenges ahead.
The $3.5 trillion Democratic agreement is a much smaller than what some progressives had been calling for, but much larger than what some moderates had said they were comfortable with. In the evenly divided chamber, the party cannot afford to lose a single Democratic vote.
Some Republicans have also grown weary of the bipartisan agreement and it is unclear if the deal will ultimately get support from 10 Republicans needed to prevent a filibuster.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the No. 2 GOP senator, told NBC News that Democrats’ announcement that they’ll proceed with a $3.5 trillion measure could “put downward pressure on Republican votes” for the separate bipartisan deal.
“I don’t think it helps. We have members who truly do want to get an infrastructure bill,” he said. “And I want to look at the entirety of the infrastructure bill on its own. But it’s awfully hard, when they continue to link them publicly, not to view it through that lens. And I think that complicates passage of the infrastructure bill for a lot of Republicans.”
When asked whether the White House was concerned about this dynamic, Psaki said that voting for one measure does not mean that you support another.
The Democrat’s $3.5 trillion plan has yet to be written into legislation and the details of the proposal remain unclear.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that the deal would include a “robust expansion of Medicare” with new benefits like dental, vision and hearing coverage, along with major funding for clean energy. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a member of the Budget and Finance committees, said the plan would be “fully paid for.”
Democrats want to pass the larger bill using the arcane budget reconciliation process that only requires 50 votes. This means they could pass it without any GOP support if every Democrat is on board.
As Senate Democrats announced their massive deal at the Capitol on Tuesday night, the separate bipartisan group of 22 senators were down the hall working on the remaining issues for their agreement. They aim to finalize the bill text soon so that the Congressional Budget Office can conduct a cost analysis.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
