WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday urged House Democrats to embrace a framework on a $1.75 trillion bill to address the nation’s social safety net programs and climate crisis, though details on some of its major policies are still unresolved.
Biden went to Capitol Hill to make a pitch for the agenda-fulfilling legislation before he departs for international summits in Europe in the afternoon.
“We have a framework that will get 50 votes in the United States Senate,” Biden told House Democrats in the basement of the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the remarks. “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week.”
Biden and House leaders want the House to quickly vote on a separate $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which was already approved by the Senate.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she wants it done by the time Biden lands in Rome at 8 p.m. Eastern time. “When the president gets off that plane we want him to have a vote of confidence from this Congress,” she told Democrats.
But party progressives have so far said they won’t support the infrastructure bill until they have a commitment that the Senate will pass the larger social spending bill. Together the two bills make up the bulk of Biden’s agenda.
Coming out of the meeting, several House progressives said the president did not convince them to move off their position, saying they need to see more than a mere framework to win their vote. “I would like to see text,” said Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif.
Congressional Progressive Caucus chairperson Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said progressives would hold another meeting to determine their official position, but she believed many of her members want to see text “because we don’t want any confusion or misunderstandings.”
She also said it remained unclear whether Biden’s plan had the support of centrist Democratic senators. “He’s confident he can get the votes,” she said, adding, “I think it’s a bit of a leap of faith.”
Several key senators, including progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and centrist Democratic Sens. Joseph Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have not publicly weighed in on whether they would support his plan. In the 50-50 split Senate, their support will determine whether the framework will result in a successful vote.
Democrats speculated that if a vote on the infrastructure bill is held Thursday, it would fail or be held open for hours to build real-time pressure on the holdouts, a risky strategy for a speaker who has never lost a major vote on the floor.
“A lot of us who are progressives, I think we’re going to have a real hard time voting for anything unless we know what those two senators are in favor of,” said Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Calif.
Biden’s visit to Capitol Hill represented a roll of the dice as he takes on a larger, public role in bringing negotiations to a close and moving toward final votes. Most of Biden’s work on the effort in recent weeks has been in one-on-one or small group meetings with pivotal lawmakers.
Stressing the message the bills would send to other countries after the Jan. 6 insurrection, he said, “the rest of the world wonders whether we can function.”
The latest framework would mark the most substantial expansion in the nation’s social programs in decades, even though it is far less ambitious than Democrats once imagined.
It would provide universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, the first expansion of public education since high school was added. The plan would also establish subsidies for child care, expand the Child Tax Credit and expand subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Medicaid would be expanded in states that chose not to do so under the 2010 law, also known as Obamacare.
Medicare would grow to include hearing coverage, a policy that is likely to be popular with seniors, but not include vision and dental benefits as Sanders had hoped for.
The climate policies have not yet been finalized but include a clean energy tax credit to spur uptake of rooftop solar, tax credits for electric vehicles and clean energy technology as well as the creation of a civilian climate corps for conservation efforts.
The climate policies, pegged at about $500 billion, could become one of the most substantial pieces of the remaining effort. However, two senators said Wednesday that the amount of money may not be enough to achieve Biden’s goal of halving emissions from 2005 levels by 2030.
“I don’t think it’s enough in terms of what we have to do to rapidly pivot to renewable energy,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said other emissions policies are needed as well as modeling to show what the Biden plan can do. “We want to see modeling,” he said.
Progressives are concerned about the bill’s move to the right in order to appease Manchin and Sinema.
In recent days, Manchin has vetoed paid family and medical leave, as well as a climate program that would have encouraged utilities to increase their use of renewable energy through a combination of payments and fines. Sinema’s opposition to Medicare negotiating prescription drug prices means that policy is out for now, too.
“At the end of the day, there are not yet enough votes” on prescription drug policy, a White House official said.
Several Democrats from New Jersey and California had hoped the plan would lift the cap on state and local taxes, known as SALT, but the framework does not call for it.
The elimination of paid leave and prescription drug policies has only redoubled progressives’ need to see final text on the social spending bill, which is being considered in a process known as reconciliation that can avert a filibuster by Senate Republicans, before agreeing to vote on the infrastructure plan.
After the meeting on the Hill, Biden will return to the White House and deliver remarks on “the path forward for his economic agenda and the next steps to getting it done,” according to a White House official.
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(Los Angeles Times staff writer Chris Megerian contributed to this report.)
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