Biden urges Democrats to unite around ‘historic’
$1.75tn investment package
President’s visit to Capitol Hill prompts flurry of
activity as Pelosi ramps up pressure on progressives to accept Biden’s
framework
Lauren
Gambino in Washington
@laurenegambino
Thu 28 Oct
2021 20.48 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/28/biden-capitol-hill-democrats-struggle-reach-deal
Joe Biden
on Thursday unveiled a “historic economic framework” that he said would make
the US more competitive and resilient, touting the $1.75tn plan to expand the
nation’s social safety net and confront the climate crisis as a victory for
consensus and compromise even as the path forward remained uncertain.
The
president, who delayed his departure to Europe to finalize the proposal, cast
the emerging deal as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to restore American
leadership and show the world that democracies can still deliver in the 21st
century.
His remarks
at the White House followed a visit to Capitol Hill on Thursday morning, where
he pleaded with House Democrats to unite behind the agreement, saying that his
presidency – and their political futures – depended on the passage of his
domestic agenda.
“I don’t
think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities and my
presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week,” he said,
according to a source familiar with his private remarks to the caucus.
The visit
set in motion a flurry of activity on Capitol Hill, as Democratic leaders,
eager to deliver Biden a legislative victory, ramped up pressure on
progressives to accept the “framework” as a done deal, paving the way for them
to join moderates in passing a related $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill.
With Republicans mostly aligned against the plan, Pelosi only has a handful of
votes to spare.
“When the
president gets off that plane, we want him to have a vote of confidence from
this Congress,” she told her fractious caucus on Thursday morning. “In order
for us to have success, we must succeed today.”
Twice
during the course of the hour-long meeting, Democratic lawmakers rose to their
feed and began to chant: “Vote, vote, vote.” But their enthusiasm was quickly
tempered as her caucus’s most liberal members dug in.
The
Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the House Progressive
Caucus, said in a statement that her leftist group would hold firm on its
insistence that the bills must move in tandem. “Members of our caucus will not
vote for the infrastructure bill without the Build Back Better Act,” said
Jayapal. “We will work immediately to finalize and pass both pieces of
legislation through the House together.”
The vote on
the bipartisan infrastructure bill is now looking likely for next week, after
Pelosi confirmed on Thursday evening it would be delayed.
Working
franticly to advance the legislation, the framework was swiftly translated into
a 1,684-page bill released shortly before a House rules committee hearing on
the measure.
“This is
not the end of the process,” said congressman Jim McGovern, a Democrat from
Massachusetts and the chair of the committee, affirming multiple times during
the hearing that the social policy package would not be ready for a vote on
Thursday. “This bill will continue to be perfected.”
Complicating
negotiations for Democratic leaders was a lack of certainty from the key
holdouts, Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
Both sounded hopeful that a deal was within reach, but stopped short of
offering their firm support.
“After
months of productive, good-faith negotiations with Biden and the White House,
we have made significant progress on the proposed budget reconciliation
package,” Sinema said, adding: “I look forward to getting this done.”
Manchin
also did not commit to supporting the legislation he played a significant role
in shaping. Asked whether he would vote for the plan, he said only that its
fate was presently “in the hands of the House”.
After
months of prolonged negotiations, the proposed framework is far smaller in size
and scope than the $3.5tn package Biden initially envisioned. Even so, the
president claimed a pre-emptive legislative achievement on par with those
enacted by Franklin D Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
“Any single
element of this framework would be viewed as a fundamental change in America.
Taken together they’re truly consequential,” Biden said during remarks from the
East Room at the White House, pointing to new spending on childcare and climate
mitigation.
“If we make
these investments, we will own the future,” he added.
The package
would make substantial new investments in childcare and caregiving as well as
transitioning the US economy away from fossil fuels. According to the White
House, the framework would put the US on track to meet the president’s pledge
to slash planet-warming emissions by 2030.
Among the
other provisions in the bill are free preschool for every three- and
four-year-old, expanded health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, and what
the White House is calling the largest “effort to combat climate change in
American history”.
Stripped
from the package were plans to provide 12 weeks of federal paid family leave
and two years of free community college; ambitious climate initiatives and
efforts to lower prescription drug prices. A proposal to expand Medicare to
cover vision, dental and hearing was pared back to just hearing.
Democrats
spent the last several weeks haggling over plans to pay for their agenda, amid
opposition from both Manchin and Sinema to various revenue-raising proposals.
On Wednesday, a novel plan to tax billionaires’ assets was tossed aside after
Manchin said the plan carried “the connotation that we’re targeting different
people”.
To offset
their spending, Democrats said they would raise an estimated $2tn by increasing
taxes on corporations and the highest earning Americans, and by rolling back
some of the Trump administration’s tax cuts passed in 2017. It honors Biden’s
campaign pledge that he would not raise taxes on Americans earning less than
$400,000 a year, according to the White House.
After weeks
of frenetic negotiations, Democrats were scrambling to cobble together a deal
that the president could tout when he travels to Rome, the Vatican, and then to
the United Nations climate conference, known as Cop26, in Glasgow, Scotland,
where he hopes to point to the accord as evidence of the US’s commitment to
confronting the climate crisis.
“We are at
an inflection point,” Biden told House lawmakers. “The rest of the world
wonders whether we can function.”
Internal
disputes over the bill delayed its passage for weeks, as Democrats blew past
self-imposed deadlines in an effort to find a compromise that could satisfy the
broad ideological expanse of their party.
The result
is a bill that reflected the limits of their governing coalition, Biden said,
indicating that this was the best deal Democrats could hope to achieve with
paper-thin majorities and unified Republican opposition.
“No one got
everything they wanted, including me,” he said. “But that’s what compromise is.
That’s consensus. And that’s what I ran on.”
The Vermont
senator Bernie Sanders, chair of the powerful budget committee, called the
framework a “major step forward” but warned that there were also “major gaps”
in the legislation. He cited the lack of paid family and medical leave for
workers and the failure to expand Medicare benefits to include dental and
vision as well as herding, a major priority for the senator.
Without all
50 senators, the legislation will not pass.
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