WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden made a quick foray to the Capitol on Wednesday hunting support for his multitrillion-dollar agenda of infrastructure, health care and other programs, a potential landmark achievement that would require near-unanimous backing from fractious Democrats.
His visit came a day after Senate Democratic leaders capped weeks of bargaining by agreeing to spend a mammoth $3.5 trillion over the coming decade on initiatives focusing on climate change, education, a Medicare expansion and more. That’s on top of a separate $1 trillion bipartisan compromise on roads, water systems and other infrastructure projects that senators from both parties are negotiating, with Biden’s support.
The president spent just under an hour at a closed-door lunch with Democratic senators in the building where he served for 36 years as a Delaware senator and where his party controls the House and Senate, though just barely. Participants said Biden paced the room with a microphone taking questions and received several standing ovations.
“It is great to be home,” Biden told reporters after his first working meeting at the Capitol with lawmakers since becoming president. “It is great to be with my colleagues, and I think we are going to get a lot done.”
Democrats’ accord on their overall $3.5 trillion figure was a major step for a party whose rival moderate and progressive factions have competing visions of how costly and bold the final package should be. But many of them say bolstering lower-earning and middle-class families, and raising taxes on wealthy people and big corporations to help pay for it, would nurture long-term economic growth and pay political dividends in next year’s elections for control of Congress.
Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said the president urged them to consider whether their plan would help people in Biden’s blue-collar hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. “His point was that we need to be thinking about folks who have given up on democracy,” Murphy said.
Democrats’ agreement on a topline spending figure, while significant, is merely an initial move that leaves the toughest decisions for later. They must translate their plan into legislation with specific spending and revenue figures, then line up the needed votes to enact it, a process likely to grind right through autumn.
With unanimous Republican opposition likely, Democrats would need support from all their lawmakers in the 50-50 Senate and could lose no more than three votes in the House.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, top Republican on the Budget Committee, belittled the emerging plan as a wasteful liberal wish list that would fuel inflation and boost taxes.
“Count me in for real infrastructure. Count me out for a tax and spend plan from Hell,” he said in a statement.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans simply want to help the rich. “They don’t want their taxes to rise. They don’t want the government to help people,” he said.
To reach their legislative goal, Democrats want to approve a budget resolution before Congress’ August recess that would let them push a subsequent, sprawling spending bill actually financing their priorities through the Senate by a simple majority vote. Without that protection, Republicans could kill the follow-on spending measure with a filibuster that would require an insurmountable 60 votes to overcome. The budget resolution itself cannot be filibustered.