President Joe Biden will head to Capitol Hill Wednesday to court Democratic Senator Joe Manchin on his $3.5 trillion budget deal that paves the way for passage of his massive ‘human’ infrastructure bill without Republican support.
Manchin is non-committal on the spending package, saying in a statement: ‘I’m also very interested in how this proposal is paid for and how it enables us to remain globally competitive. I will reserve any final judgement until I’ve had the opportunity to thoroughly evaluate the proposal.’
Biden will need every Democratic senator on board in the face of unified Republican opposition. It’s also unclear where moderate Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema stands on the issue.
Both Manchin and Sinema’s votes are key because buried in the budget deal is language that will enable Democrats to use a process called reconciliation to pass a major item on the president’s agenda: his ‘human’ infrastructure bill that will pour federal resources into climate change, health care and family-service programs.
Reconciliation allows the Senate to advance legislation with a simple majority instead of the 60 vote rule, a threshold that has killed many a piece of legislation. Manchin’s vote is critical given the 50-50 Senate.
President Joe Biden will head to Capitol Hill Wednesday to court Democratic Senator Joe Manchin on his $3.5 trillion budget deal
Senator Joe Manchin’s vote is critical as Biden needs every Democratic senator in his corner
‘I’m open to looking at everything they provide. OK? They’re going to have to provide all the information that’s going to be needed,’ Manchin told reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning. ‘They worked hard, they should have a proposal.’
He said he looked forward to hearing from Biden.
‘The president is going to come today and explain. We’ll listen to that, we’ll look at the proposal, look at the priorities they have for our country and then basically look at how we’ve going to pay for it,’ he said.
The White House announced Wednesday morning that Biden would make the trek up Pennsylvania Avenue to speak to Senate Democrats at their weekly lunch.
‘.@potus looks forward to attending the Senate Dem Caucus lunch today to continue making the case for the duel track approach to build the economy back better by investing in infrastructure, protecting our climate, and supporting the next generation of workers and families,’ White House press secretary Jen Psaki wrote on Twitter.
The budget deal was put together by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and the 11 senators who caucus with the Democrats on the Budget Committee.
The White House has been involved in crafting the measure: Biden’s head of legislative affairs Louisa Terrell, and Brian Deese, his National Economic Council director, were at Tuesday night’s meeting.
‘We are very proud of this plan,’ Schumer said. ‘We know we have a long road to go. We’re going to get this done for the sake of making average Americans’ lives a whole lot better.’
Liberals had pushed for a larger, $6 trillion ‘human’ infrastructure package. But progressive Senator Bernie Sanders said he supported the deal.
But Manchin and Sinema wanted a smaller package than the $3.5 trillion.
Republicans, meanwhile, have come out against it.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky blasted the agreement. With inflation ‘raging,’ he said Wednesday morning on the Senate floor, the budget plan is ‘wildly out of proportion to what the country needs right now.’
Questions remain about exactly what is in the budget, which Senate Democrats came to verbal agreement on late Tuesday night, and how it will be paid for.
The budget resolution sets only broad spending and revenue parameters, leaving the actual funding and specific decisions about which programs are affected — and by exactly how much — for later legislation.
Separately, a bipartisan group of senators is still working on third measure that would spend around $1 trillion on roads, water systems and other infrastructure projects, another Biden priority.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, announced the accord flanked by all 11 Democrats on the chamber’s budget committee after a two-hour evening meeting on Capitol Hill on Tuesday
Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said the budget measure would be fully paid for with offsetting revenue but provided no detail.
Biden has proposed financing the measure with higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and beefing up the IRS’s budget so it can collect more revenue from scofflaws.
The budget also will include language calling for no tax increases on people making less than $400,000 a year, a Biden demand, or on small businesses.