Headaches mount for Biden in spending fight

Democrats are facing growing headaches to get their mammoth two-step infrastructure package to President Biden’s desk, with ramped-up partisan pressure and a tense, summer slog of legislating ahead.

A bipartisan framework that gave a jolt to Biden’s dealmaking abilities is already in trouble amid fierce GOP backlash over a pledge by the president and congressional leadership that the plan has to move alongside a larger Democratic-only bill, which Biden tried to clean up on Saturday. 

Meanwhile, Democrats aren’t yet unified on what a second, larger package would look like or how big it would be. And those discussions, still in the early phases, are rife with potential flashpoints, as progressives worry their more centrist colleagues are going to roll them.

The pressure points from both sides put Biden’s biggest legislative priority on shaky ground, as Democratic leaders and the White House try to get a sweeping package through an increasingly acrimonious Congress while holding the slimmest of majorities in both chambers.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) bluntly laid out the risk: If Democrats can’t navigate the policy and political minefields, they could end up with nothing.

“If we don’t have an agreement on both, we’re not going to have the votes for either. Plain and simple,” Schumer said.

It’s a sharp U-turn from just Thursday, when Biden appeared to catch a break after weeks, if not months, of closed-door negotiations — first with GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and then with the bipartisan Senate gang.

Biden stood next to a group of 10 senators, evenly split between the two parties, announcing that they had an agreement and reminiscing about his days in the Senate when Congress used to, as he put it, “get an awful lot done.”

Shortly after that, in a boost for the Democratic-only bill, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — viewed as one of the biggest holdouts on a go-it-alone package — suggested it was “inevitable” that Democrats would move forward with reconciliation, which would allow them to bypass the 60-vote legislative filibuster.

But the period of good feeling quickly got mired in Republican fury after Biden vowed that the bipartisan bill and a second Democratic-only bill had to move together. The strategy — which Biden tried to walk back on Saturday, saying that it was not his “intent” to suggest he would veto the bipartisan deal— infuriated Republicans within the negotiating group.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), part of a larger group of 21 senators who have endorsed the bipartisan framework, quickly warned that they could pull their support. An aide to Moran told The Hill that Republicans are seeking assurances from Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Manchin that the bipartisan deal wouldn’t be “linked” to a larger Democratic-only package.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who was part of the core group of 10 negotiators, warned that Biden’s comments “turned everything upside down.” Meanwhile, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) — a close ally of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the latest lead negotiator for Republicans — started working the phones to try to salvage the bipartisan agreement.

“I’ve been on the phone with the White House, my Democratic colleagues, my Republican colleagues,” Portman said, describing the behind-the-scenes effort.

The pushback from Republicans involved in the talks comes as many GOP senators, including Cassidy and Portman, previously acknowledged that Democrats could try to pass another, larger bill under reconciliation and without GOP support.

But it was Biden’s statement that if the bipartisan deal was “the only one that comes to me, I’m not signing it” that raised alarm bells among Republicans, who quickly accused Democrats of trying to hold the bipartisan bill “hostage.” Biden tried to tamp down that anger on Saturday pledging to work to try to pass the bipartisan plan “with vigor.”

For some progressive Democrats, the GOP fury only fed their belief that McConnell and Republicans were never ultimately interested in getting a bipartisan deal heading into the 2022 midterm elections.

“Who could have possibly predicted that Senate Republicans were wasting months of a Dem majority’s precious time negotiating in bad faith just to suddenly renege on a bipartisan agreement,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted.

The bipartisan $1.2 trillion deal was already facing skepticism from progressives.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the Congressional Progressive Caucus chairwoman, said that she’s still reviewing the proposal. But she sounded skeptical about the suggested ways to pay for the new spending. 

“It sounds like a lot of smoke and mirrors,” Jayapal said. “If it’s just repurposing money we’ve already allocated to other things, I’m not in favor of that.”

But Democrats also aren’t yet unified on the second piece of the infrastructure plan: a sweeping multitrillion-dollar bill that they will need to pass without GOP support. Democrats still need to work out what will be included and how big to go. 

“We are internally discussing our various priorities so that we can get to a place where everybody is on the same page,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said about the Senate Budget Committee’s discussions. 

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has indicated that he wants to go up to $6 trillion and pay for roughly half of the spending. Meanwhile, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), Sanders’s House counterpart, said he’s on track to begin marking up the reconciliation instructions next month but predicted they won’t hit Sanders’s preferred topline. 

“I think the consensus of opinion is that it will not be $6 trillion,” Yarmuth said. 

Part of the hurdle for Democrats is finding a sweet spot that can satisfy their progressive members without losing too many moderates. The balance is particularly difficult in the Senate because Schumer needs all 50 of his members in agreement. Yet even in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can lose only four members given her razor-thin majority. 

In a sign of the squabbling to come, several Senate Democrats have also indicated that Sanders’s top line is too big, and Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) is already a “no” and predicting others will join him. At the same time, any push to go smaller would draw fierce pushback from progressives who are publicly warning that they won’t let their centrist colleagues burn them on their priorities and want a firm commitment before they let anything move. 

“We need to have some understanding. I’m not voting for a watered-down bipartisan package until I know what’s going to be in reconciliation,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “We’ve got a lot of work to do.” 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) warned that progressives wouldn’t “get left holding the bag.” 

“It’s one deal,” she added. “We need all the pieces.” 

Cristina Marcos and Mike Lillis contributed.