US President Joe Biden announced a “historic” framework Thursday for spending $3 trillion on America’s social safety net and crumbling infrastructure, but his claim to be on the cusp of a major political victory had yet to get full backing from Democrats.
After weeks of internal party feuding on two ambitious bills, Biden sought a dramatic win by announcing he was sure of support on a revised spending framework just before he took off to meet the pope and attend a G20 summit in Rome.
“I know we have a historic economic framework,” Biden said in an address to the nation from the White House, shortly after meeting with Democratic leaders in Congress.
“Everybody’s on board,” he told reporters earlier. “It’s a good day.”
But key Democrats, whose wrangling over the contents and costs of the social spending bill has threatened to strip Biden of a legacy-making achievement, sent mixed messages.
Two bills are in play — one worth about $1.75 trillion for education, healthcare, childcare and clean energy, and another worth $1.2 trillion for bridges and other hard infrastructure.
Nancy Pelosi, a key Biden ally and speaker of the House of Representatives, said she wanted a vote held Thursday on the infrastructure package. That is something left-leaning Democrats have resisted so far, insisting they will not back the infrastructure bill unless their priorities are included in the social spending bill.
Two conservative Democratic senators who have held up the social spending component, calling it too expensive, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, sounded positive but did not commit to supporting Biden’s framework.
Another major negotiating figure, leftist Senator Bernie Sanders, said he saw “major gaps” in the plan.
But Biden made a pitch for his party finally to put its divisions aside and get on board.
“We spent hours and hours and hours over months and months working on this,” Biden said. “No one got everything they wanted, including me, but that’s what compromise is. That’s consensus, and that’s what I ran on.”
– Claim of full support –
The 78-year-old president had hoped to secure a vote in Congress before flying to Rome and then next week to a UN climate summit in Glasgow.
But while Democrats control both houses of Congress, the margins are so tight — with only a one vote advantage in the Senate and a handful in the House — that enacting major legislation is tortuous.
Biden has been repeatedly frustrated as Manchin and Sinema held up his social spending ambitions in the Senate, while left-leaning Democrats in the House blocked the infrastructure bill.
Biden has already compromised heavily, seeing his original $3.5 trillion wish list for social spending whittled down to about half.
But at this point, even the scaled-back spending framework would represent a major legislative win a year after Biden defeated Donald Trump with a promise to heal America’s “soul.”
And despite continued Democratic debate, a senior White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “The president believes this framework will earn the support of all 50 Democratic senators and pass the House.”
If enacted, Biden’s new proposal would provide universal pre-school education for three and four-year-olds, expand government-backed health care coverage for at least four years and slash the country’s greenhouse gas emissions over a decade.
Left out of the framework, however, were key progressive priorities to offer 12 weeks of paid family leave, free community college, and reform on America’s sky-high prescription drug prices.
Liberals including Congressional Progressive Caucus chairwoman Pramila Jayapal and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said they needed to see a finalized legislative text before committing.
“We need to keep the promise that was made. We have been very clear,” added leftist Minnesota lawmaker Ilhan Omar.
New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez said he wanted to see more specifics, voicing disappointment that state and local tax relief and prescription drug pricing reform appeared to have been dropped.
“I’ve been around long enough to know that what’s in the legislation is critically important… I see the framework as an opportunity to get to the final goal,” he told MSNBC.
