President Joe Biden urged Congress to approve an infrastructure framework drafted by a bipartisan group of senators on Tuesday, arguing it would benefit working and middle-class families across the country.
“This bipartisan breakthrough is a great deal for the American people. Not just red states or blue states, but everybody. The jobs created here would largely be for blue-collar workers,” Biden said during an event in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
The event was Biden’s first aimed at promoting the $1.2 trillion agreement to the public. He is expected to speak at additional events to sell voters on the economic benefits of the package, which the White House says would represent a historic investment in the nation’s roads, bridges and waterways.
The public sales pitch follows a brief flap involving Biden’s comments last week in which he said he wouldn’t sign the bipartisan deal into law unless Congress sent him another bill that contains key Democratic priorities like child care, elder care, and green energy investments. The remarks, which were aimed at assuaging wary progressives, infuriated Republicans who helped negotiate the agreement. Linking the two bills directly as Biden had, they argued, wasn’t part of the deal.
Prospects for passage of the bipartisan agreement got back on track, however, after Biden issued a lengthy statement on Saturday, clarifying that he would support the $1.2 trillion framework even if Democrats don’t send him another multitrillion-dollar bill they are hoping to pass on a party-line vote.
“Do I take him at his word and do I think he’s a man of honor? Absolutely,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who helped negotiate the bipartisan deal, said of BIden Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” The Utah senator added that “the waters have been calmed” by Biden’s clarification.
But other Republicans are demanding Democrats go even further, calling on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to echo Biden and reverse her comments from last week, in which she said there “ain’t gonna be no bipartisan bill unless we’re going to have a reconciliation bill.” Pelosi has given no indication she will follow Biden’s lead on that.
Democrats are proceeding with a “two-track” strategy: passing the bipartisan framework, if possible, and following it up later with another, more robust package that Biden campaigned on during the 2020 presidential election and that would include expanded child tax credits.
“I’m going to make the case that critical investments are still needed including those in my Families Plan. Maybe the most important among them is the child tax credit,” Biden said Tuesday in Wisconsin.
The challenge facing Democrats is that there is a wide array of opinions among the party on what a second infrastructure package should look like. Progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), for example, want Congress to pass a broad measure totaling as much as $6 trillion that includes many Democratic priorities, including elder care, housing and expanded health care provisions.
Moderate senators, meanwhile, while supportive of the “two-track” approach, have voiced concern with another costly bill and its impact on the national debt. Moderates hold outsize influence in the Senate because Democrats control only 50 seats and total party unity will be required to pass a second infrastructure bill under a special budget process called reconciliation.
Appearing on MSNBC earlier on Tuesday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) reiterated his support for reconciliation but cautioned he would be an unlikely vote for a large $6 trillion bill.
“If no Republicans [support a second infrastructure package], which I don’t think we will have, then we’ll have to work it through reconciliation. I just haven’t agreed on the amount,” Manchin said.