WASHINGTON — Democratic negotiations over a multi-trillion-dollar spending proposal represent the most serious test yet of President Joe Biden’s relationship with his party’s liberal wing, threatening to damage a once-strong bond between the two sides that has lasted since the 2020 general election.
Progressive leaders warn that if Biden isn’t able to pull an acceptable form of the legislation across the finish line, he risks opening up a rift within the party that would take considerable effort to close.
“If at the end of the day he delivers something that is milquetoast for a lot of people, it will feel and be perceived as, ‘When the going got tough, you rolled. You didn’t take on the toughest fights,’” said Faiz Shakir, who managed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.
The warning from liberals comes amid a broader set of struggles for the White House, as it tries to navigate a series of intractable challenges on Capitol Hill while Biden’s own approval rating drops, according to recent polls.
Democrats say they are concerned that the failure to pass both prongs of Biden’s economic agenda — a proposed $3.5 trillion budget bill and a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package — would sink the party’s standing with the public and jeopardize their ability to stave off major losses in the 2022 midterm elections.
But progressives are worried that the budget bill — which they hope will fund liberal policy priorities ranging from combating climate change to educational and home care funding — will be left behind, even if other parts of Biden’s agenda pass.
And even if a version of the budget bill does eventually become law, they’re concerned that it would be severely pared back to placate moderate Senate Democrats, who have demanded the legislation’s overall price tag drop precipitously.
Liberals turned out to vote for Biden, who long had a reputation as a moderate, in 2020 in part because of the expansive policy platform he campaigned on. Progressive leaders now say he needs to step up to fight for those policies.
“President Biden could absolutely be doing more to make good on those campaign promises,” Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., a member of a group of liberal lawmakers known as “The Squad,” said in a statement to McClatchy. “None of us, but especially not him, were elected to give up.”
Progressives leaders say they remain optimistic that some version of the spending package will pass, even after a series of intense negotiations. Activists also point out that even if frustration is mounting with Biden, liberals are directing much more of their anger towards Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who are most insistent that the bill’s overall price be reduced.
“We know who the enemy is,” said Markos Moulitsas, founder of the liberal blog DailyKos, who added that he thought Biden was doing all he could to lean on the Democratic holdouts.
But progressive still say that the stakes of the legislation are so great that no one would escape blame if it fails. Biden promised to deliver the type of transformative economic change not seen since former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs in the 1930s.
“This is a huge moment for Biden,” said Murshed Zaheed, a former senior Capitol Hill aide and progressive activist. “One of Biden’s selling cards during the campaign was that because of his four decades of experience, he would get a deal done. He sold himself as a shrewd dealmaker who would be able to cajole Republicans while keeping the Democratic Party united to pass FDR-style legislation that he was promising.”
Sanders, a former campaign opponent of Biden’s who is now a Capitol Hill ally, said: “We are talking about the most consequential piece of legislation for working people in the modern history of this country. It’s not a baseball game. This is tough stuff.”
White House officials have vowed that Biden is committed to passing all parts of his agenda through Congress and has focused his time of late on negotiating with Sinema and Manchin directly to bring them on board.
“Right now, it’s not a secret about what is the hold up,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Thursday.
Biden has maintained a positive relationship with the party’s liberal wing since winning the Democratic presidential primary last year, when both were focused on defeating then-President Donald Trump. The $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill Biden signed into law in March in particular won widespread praise from the left.
But some liberal activists have grown frustrated with the president over his refusal to support eliminating the legislative filibuster in the Senate, which they say would allow Democratic lawmakers to pass a bill expanding voting rights on party-line votes. More recently, they have accused Biden of continuing Trump’s immigration policies at the border, after thousands of Haitian migrants were removed from the country in September under a public health law.
Some Democrats say they worry that failing to pass the budget bill would do far more lasting damage to Biden’s relationship with the party’s liberal faction.
“I have never, ever, ever seen the discord inside the Democratic caucus that exists today,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., a close ally of the White House who has served in the House since 2005.
“It’s dangerous for this to happen because the feelings are not going to end after the vote,” he added.
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(The Kansas City Star’s Daniel Desrochers contributed to this report.)
