“We have a deal,” Joe Biden told reporters on Thursday when asked about a breakthrough in negotiations between the White House and a bipartisan group of 10 senators.
The bill will be a combination of $559 billion in new spending with another $640 billion in “repurposed” spending for a total package worth $1.2 trillion over eight years. Senators Joe Manchin and Mitt Romney say the new spending will be completely offset, meaning that there will be a rise in taxes or fees, or both, to pay for it.
“We all agree that none of us got all we wanted. I clearly didn’t get all I wanted, they gave more than I think maybe what they were planning to give in the first place,” Biden said. “But this reminds me of the days when we used to get an awful lot done up in the United States Congress.”
Biden said Republicans and the bipartisan group of senators did not support the issues outlined in his American Families Plan, which calls for an additional $1.8 trillion federal spending on education, childcare and other priorities. The Families Plan is the second part of the President’s proposal to revitalize the nation and ensure a more equitable recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’ll see what happens in the reconciliation bill, the budget process, and if we can get some compromise there — and if we can’t, see if I can attract all the Democrats to a position that is there, but we’re going to move on a dual track,” Biden said.
The proposal is considerably less than the $2.3 trillion the president initially proposed. But most of what isn’t in the bipartisan bill will almost certainly be in another Democratic bill that the president plans to ram through Congress using the reconciliation process.
The president will also include the $1.8 trillion “American Families Plan” as part of the second infrastructure bill. That legislation would vastly expand the social safety net to include goodies for much of the middle class and even some for the upper-middle class.
Democrats are likely going to have to scramble to get the bill done before the end of the fiscal year on September 30. Reconciliation is a laborious process that you can be sure the Republicans will draw out as long and as painfully as possible.
Biden said Republicans and the bipartisan group of senators did not support the issues outlined in his American Families Plan, which calls for an additional $1.8 trillion federal spending on education, childcare and other priorities. The Families Plan is the second part of the President’s proposal to revitalize the nation and ensure a more equitable recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’ll see what happens in the reconciliation bill, the budget process, and if we can get some compromise there — and if we can’t, see if I can attract all the Democrats to a position that is there, but we’re going to move on a dual track,” Biden said.
There will be no compromise on the American Families Plan or any other part of Joe Biden’s agenda. It’s not even clear that there will be 10 Republican senators to vote for allowing the bipartisan deal to move forward in the Senate, although it’s not likely Biden would have jumped on board unless he was assured the bill would have the votes.
Republicans probably figured they could get more political mileage from the infrastructure bill by some of them being for it rather than the party trying to obstruct it. They’ll not get any more political mileage from any other multi-trillion spending scheme dreamed up by Biden and the Democrats.
