House Democrats to hold second meeting amid impasse

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said House Democrats will hold a second closed-door caucus meeting Friday afternoon amid a standoff in the party over President Biden’s $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.

His announcement came after a meeting of rank-and-file Democrats that lasted more than two hours and yielded no resolution — and just before the White House announced President Biden would be joining the meeting. Democrats are attempting to thread the needle between moderates in their caucus who say a bipartisan infrastructure bill should pass as soon as possible and liberals who are withholding votes for that measure until the reconciliation one advances.

“My expectation is that we will have another meeting this afternoon, that we are working on trying to get to a place where everybody is comfortable. And I believe there’s overwhelming support in our caucus, almost unanimous support in our caucus, for both the BIF [infrastructure bill] and the Build Back Better,” Hoyer said leaving the first caucus meeting.

“And we’re going to have additional discussions of how that end is accomplished.”

Democrats including Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.) indicated that the president’s presence would be welcome.

“I’d like to see the president,” he said. “I think the president might be the only person that can bridge both the trust gap and the timing gap.”

—Updated at 1:28 p.m.