Biden meets with over a dozen Democrats with infrastructure, budget

WASHINGTON — After weeks of rising tensions among congressional Democrats, President Joe Biden is stepping in Wednesday to personally attempt to resolve divisions that are threatening to tear the Democratic caucus apart and tank the president’s first-term domestic agenda.

Biden is hosting key members of at least four warring factions of congressional Democrats on Wednesday afternoon: moderates in the House, progressives in the House, moderates in the Senate and progressives in the Senate.

Biden’s goal is to broker a compromise between the different groups and to find common ground on a $1 trillion infrastructure bill and a $3 trillion-plus climate and social safety net bill.

These delicate intraparty negotiations are taking place against the backdrop of two more looming but unrelated deadlines: a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown, and a likely mid-October deadline to raise the debt ceiling or risk the United States defaulting on its sovereign debt. 

Each of these issues, the debt ceiling and the annual government funding bill, has traditionally required high-wire negotiations between Congress and the White House. But neither of them will be Biden’s priority on Wednesday.

While the specifics change hour by hour, at the heart of the tension within the Democratic caucuses is that House moderates don’t want to vote for a huge green energy and education bill until their priority — a bipartisan infrastructure bill — passes the House first.

But House progressives don’t want to vote in favor of the bipartisan infrastructure bill until their top priority, the social safety net legislation, passes the Senate.

The schedule of Biden’s meetings Wednesday is also relevant. Biden is meeting with moderate Democrats first, and then progressives later on in the day.

This suggests that moderates will get a chance to explain to Biden what their red lines are. And then after that, Biden will work with progressives to determine what other ways they might incorporate progressive priorities into the huge bills, such that enough progressives can come to see the bills as a victory for their priorities.

It also signals that the progressives, who outnumber moderates in the House, will get the last word.

After a career spent negotiating bills in the Senate, Biden is no stranger to tough talks and compromise. But his style of negotiating typically relies on personal trust and long-term friendships.

After he helped to broker a compromise between Republicans and Democrats on infrastructure this summer, Biden explained that he and the senators involved “go back a long way, where we’re used to doing one thing: Give each other our word and that’s the end.”

But when it comes to key progressives in the House, Biden does not have that kind of…