WASHINGTON —
President Joe Biden announced Thursday a revised
framework to try to pass a $1.85 trillion social safety net bill and a $1
trillion infrastructure measure, just hours before he leaves for a six-day
European trip to meet with world leaders.
اضافة اعلان
“After months of tough and thoughtful negotiations, I think we
have — I know we have — a historic economic framework,” the president said.
“This framework includes historic investments in our nation, and in our
people.”
Biden delivered his remarks from the White House after returning
from Capitol Hill, where he pleaded with Democratic lawmakers to put aside
their differences and vote for both measures as a way of advancing their common
agenda.
He did not explicitly say that the Democrats on Capitol Hill had
all agreed to back his new framework, and several key lawmakers in his party
issued statements that pointedly did not say they were promising to vote for
it.
Biden was pushing to convince liberal members that a final
compromise was close enough to allow them to support a separate $1 trillion
infrastructure bill that has already passed the Senate, and House leaders were
pressing Democrats to vote for the public works legislation later Thursday.
At the Capitol, Biden framed the success of his push as crucial,
saying its fate would help determine that of his presidency and his party’s
hold on Congress, and could restore the nation’s standing on the world stage.
But liberals were still not satisfied with a plan that was
clearly still unfinished even as Biden hailed its components.
“What I would say is you have the outline of a very significant
piece of legislation — I want us to make it better,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders,
I-Vt., the Budget Committee chair.
It remains unclear how quickly votes could take place, and there
remains deep mistrust between progressives in the House and Sens. Joe Manchin
of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, two centrist holdouts who have
forced deep cuts in the president’s proposals.
Biden expressed confidence Thursday that those differences had
been ironed out after several months of intensive negotiations, as well as
last-minute discussions that stretched into the night Wednesday.
“No one got everything they wanted, including me,” he said. “But
that’s what compromise is. That’s consensus. And that’s what I ran on.”
In a statement, Sinema stopped substantially short of promising
support, although she sounded an upbeat note on the talks.
“After months of productive, good-faith negotiations with
President Biden and the White House, we have made significant progress on the
proposed budget reconciliation package,” she said.
Manchin did not commit to supporting it either, saying only,
“It’s in the hands of the House.”
But one person close to both senators said they had privately
indicated that they support Biden’s framework, even as key details remained to
be worked out.
The package is considerably more modest than the cradle-to-grave
expansion of the safety net that the president initially envisioned. But the
provisions for young children would offer a significant boost to middle-class
families that have struggled for decades with economic uncertainty. They
include universal preschool for more than 6 million 3- and 4-year-olds and
subsidies for child care that would limit costs to no more than 7 percent of
income for most families. Funding for both of those provisions would last for
six years.
It includes about $555 billion for programs to move Americans to
electric vehicles and entice utilities away from natural gas and coal,
representing what would be the largest federal investment in combating climate
change.
Democratic leaders were keen to hand the president a victory
before he departed for Europe this week. The president planned to attend a
climate summit on Sunday in Scotland, where he hoped to point to the deal as
evidence of the United States’ commitment to tackling climate change.
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