It’s all raising tough questions that Biden and his party are rushing to answer by the deadline for passage, Oct. 31.
With the calendar slipping toward a new deadline, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is warning that “difficult decisions must be made” to trim President Joe Biden’s expansive plans for reimagining the nation’s social service programs and tackling climate change.
Republicans are dead set against the package. So Biden and his party are left to deliberate among themselves along familiar lines, centrists and moderates, with all eyes still on two key holdouts, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, whose votes are crucial in the evenly divided Senate.
“The president’s view is that we’re continuing to make progress, we’re having important discussions about what a package that is smaller than $3.5 trillion would look like,” said Psaki. But it's time to get it settled. Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said their priorities are “not some fringe wish list” but the agenda the president and Democrats campaigned on.
Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington state, chair of the New Democrat Coalition, made a similar push during a meeting of moderate lawmakers last month at the White House.