Democrats trim Biden’s Build Back Better bill in a race to make deal
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on his Build Back Better infrastructure agenda at the NJ TRANSIT Meadowlands Maintenance Complex in Kearny, New Jersey, U.S., October 25, 2021.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
WASHINGTON – As President Joe Biden prepares to depart on Thursday for a week of summits in Europe, the White House and congressional Democrats are scrambling to finalize a deal on their signature domestic spending package.
If they can accomplish this, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to bring a companion bipartisan infrastructure bill to the House floor for a vote before the president leaves for Rome. That bill has already been passed in the Senate. If it is approved in the House, Biden could sign it into law this week.
Biden visited New Jersey on Monday to promote the infrastructure piece of his two-part plan.
“This is going to be good union jobs for a prevailing wage that you can raise a family on, jobs that can’t be outsourced,” he said of the bill’s rail and transportation funding. “We’ll make the largest investment in public transportation in the history of America.”
Until Democrats can agree on the terms of the social safety net expansion bill, progressives in the House will not approve the infrastructure bill.
But in the Senate, two centrist Democrats — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — are refusing to endorse the spending plan until their specific demands are met.
In order to satisfy Manchin, the topline cost of the spending bill is being slashed from $3.5 trillion to between $1.5 and $2 trillion. To win over Sinema, Democrats must rework their original plan to tax the highest earners and corporations to pay for the safety net expansion.
Tough choices
Democrats are making some difficult decisions to bring the plan’s over price tag down. Several of Biden’s campaign promises have been abandoned altogether, like providing free community college and instituting a clean electricity standard with penalties for utilities that don’t comply.
Other programs that were initially going to be permanent will instead expire in a year or two, such as the expanded Child Tax Credit and expanded Medicaid.
Still, more plans were on a knife’s edge Monday, such as a plan to expand Medicare to include hearing, vision and dental care coverage. This plan is popular with voters and with members of Congress, but it’s also expensive, projected to cost around $350 billion over a decade.
Over the weekend, Pelosi acknowledged that Democrats are considering whether to cleave off the most expensive of the three Medicare services, dental care, in order to cut the cost. “Dental is very expensive,” she told CNN.
The Medicare question was further complicated Monday afternoon by reports that Manchin does not support any expansion of the program.
Another provision being reworked was paid family leave, a hallmark piece of Biden’s pledge that his bill would ease the financial burden on working…
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