WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is no stranger to fraught congressional negotiations.
But perhaps even he has never faced a balancing act on Capitol Hill quite like this one.
As lawmakers near the final phase of a two-track legislative process this month, Biden is caught between retaining support for a bipartisan infrastructure deal and a separate larger spending package that includes many of his spending priorities.
It’s a split that has pitted wary Republicans and centrist Democrats against the Democratic Party’s restless liberal faction, which is worried the bipartisan deal will sap support for the larger legislation that they consider the bigger priority.
The competing pressures will force Biden to play the role of dealmaker-in-chief, trying to balance each side’s demands as he aims for a legislative feat that even allies warn could fall apart at any moment.
“It is a gargantuan task,” said Mark Pryor, former Democratic senator from Arkansas. “And there’s no guarantee any of it will pass.”
At stake is more than $4 trillion new spending over the next decade that would fund everything from roads and bridge repair to climate change resiliency. It would be a policy victory likely to become a central part of his party’s message during next year’s midterm elections and even shape Biden’s ultimately legacy as president.
Failure, allies acknowledge, would be a stunning setback for the White House, in particular for a president who touts his decadeslong career in the Senate as proof he knows how to navigate the legislative body’s often inscrutable politics.
“This is a sliver of a runway, but if there’s anyone who can land both planes, it’s Joe Biden,” said Eric Schultz, former deputy press secretary for President Barack Obama. “The challenge will be separating the bluster from the votes.”
One bill would provide nearly $1 trillion for roads, bridges and other infrastructure priorities as part of a bargain with Republican senators.
The other $3.5 trillion spending bill, which Democrats hope to pass on their own through the budget reconciliation process, represents virtually every other piece of Biden’s domestic agenda — from combating climate change to tackling poverty.
MANCHIN AND OCASIO-CORTEZ
Tensions over the two bills heightened over the weekend, when centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he couldn’t guarantee he would support the reconciliation bill — a major development given that even one defection in the evenly divided Senate could prevent its passage.
Liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, meanwhile, said she and other House progressives won’t vote for the bipartisan deal unless the Senate also passes the larger reconciliation bill.
The White House reiterated this week it remains committed to passing both measures.
“I think the president has been clear that he wants to sign both into law,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday. “We’re encouraged by the movement of the infrastructure package forward. And we’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes, and the president will continue to advocate for, publicly, the reconciliation package, given how important his ‘Build Back Better’ agenda is to him.”
Psaki said the White House legislative affairs team has had more than 375 meetings and calls with lawmakers and senior congressional aides on just the reconciliation package, contending this “behind-the-scenes” work should refute the notion that this legislation has taken a backseat to the bipartisan infrastructure deal.
Biden has an uneasy relationship with his party’s liberal wing in Congress on a host of issues, a dynamic that reached a crescendo this week.
Progressives on Capitol Hill are newly emboldened after their protest against the end of the national eviction moratorium spurred the White House to reverse course and issue a partial moratorium.
“We forced the White House to do better,” said New York Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones, adding that he hoped it marked “a turning point in the way that this White House views progressives.”
“We are prepared to leverage our energy and our activism in close coordination with grassroots activists and people all across this country of good conscience to do right by the American people,” Jones said.
Housing, the issue which spurred the five-day protest on Capitol Hill, will factor heavily into the debate over the reconciliation package. Biden initially proposed more than $200 billion for affordable housing as part of his infrastructure plan, but those provisions were omitted from the bipartisan plan negotiated with GOP senators.
House Democrats are insistent that the housing money be included in the reconciliation package. Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green said affordable housing is a more important piece of infrastructure than new roads or bridges for many Americans.
“If you don’t have a place to live, a road and bridge sometimes can become your home,” Green said. “In my district, I’ve got people who are living under the overpass just outside of my office. That’s their home. Housing is infrastructure.”
Republican leaders are eager to portray any concession to progressives as proof that Biden’s party has lurched left despite his appeals to moderates.
“I think that the progressive wing is where the energy is … When they play the music, Democrats up here dance,” South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said this week.
“You’re going to have a lot of pressure, particularly on people like Sen. Manchin, who otherwise might be inclined to vote for less — vote for less in taxes, vote for less spending — that are going to be under enormous amounts of pressure because that wing of their party in both the House and frankly the Senate is really ascendant today,” Thune said.
EXPERIENCE
Biden spent 36 years in the Senate, negotiating landmark legislation like the Violence Against Women Act in the 1990s. Later, as vice president, he was often dispatched to Capitol Hill for pressing issues such as the so-called “fiscal cliff” negotiations in 2012 when he engaged in talks directly with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell.
“I’ve heard President Obama almost joke that Joe Biden is a creature of the Senate, whereas Senator Obama had a drive-by experience,” Pryor said.
Democratic strategists urged the president to highlight, for members of his own party, the political importance of passing both bills.
“The one thing that will be important for President Biden to do, and it’s more of an internal thing, is to remind lawmakers in both the House and Senate how important it is to go into 2022 with a message of accomplishment for Democrats having had control of Congress and making the case for keeping it,” said Robert Gibbs, former White House press secretary under Obama.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a former presidential candidate who closely aligns with the liberal House faction, said the country has for decades under-invested in children and combating climate change, two issues that progressives hope to address in the reconciliation package.
“No one’s going to get everything they want, but no one’s going to get shut out either,” Warren told reporters.
