President Joe Biden went to the Senate on Wednesday (July 14) in an effort to get Democrats to promise his historic, high-line bid to transform the United States with trillions of dollars in infrastructure spending.
“We will finish this thing,” he said during lunch with Democratic senators.
Biden then returned to the White House to meet with Democratic and Republican governors and mayors on the same subject.
He is working hard to pass two huge spending plans in the next few months.
“This is a process. There are steps to take. He will continue to advocate. He will continue to talk and engage with members,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. “Before both legislations are passed, you will see him do this.”
Biden’s desire for large-scale government intervention surprised many people. He cleverly but clearly called it the revival of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pulled the United States out of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Since trillions of stimulus spending has been implemented after the coronavirus pandemic, Biden now hopes to focus on infrastructure investment, with the goal of everything from creaking bridges to insufficient public education.
Since many Republican lawmakers are in favor of some infrastructure spending, at least when it comes to “hard” versions such as roads and bridges, Biden is also using his campaign to show that he can achieve the kind of basically extinct in divided Washington. Bipartisan cooperation.
In order to balance the presidency this summer, Biden is negotiating a spending plan of approximately $1.2 trillion. Republicans will join the plan while seeking a larger version with the goal of “soft” infrastructure, such as education, Only the Democratic Party will support it.
The magic number of 3.5 trillion dollars?
After Donald Trump became president, the challenge went far beyond overcoming the harmful Republican-Democratic confrontation.
Biden also needs to thread the needle inside his own party.
Democrats include both centrists, such as Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, who is mainly a Republican, and enthusiastic Senator Bernie Sanders who claims to be a socialist.
In a breakthrough late Tuesday, senior Democrats in the Senate emerged from the crowding and announced that they had put a price tag of $3.5 trillion on the second infrastructure plan.
This is a far cry from Sanders’ proposal of spending as much as $6 trillion.
However, $3.5 trillion is already historic, and the Democrats say it meets all their priorities, including tackling climate change and improving the social welfare of the poor. In contrast, 3.5 trillion US dollars is not far from the annual GDP of the European economic powerhouse Germany.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said: “Every major plan that President Biden asked us to provide has received strong funding. He is an important ally of Biden and behind the rapid schedule of the two infrastructure packages. driving force.”
Psaki admits that Biden’s visit to Capitol Hill shows that there is still a long way to go.
“If there are enough votes for each priority, there will be a vote, and it will happen. So I would say that he is walking towards the hill because this is the natural next step,” she said.
However, just “a few weeks ago, everyone said this was dead, and this will not happen,” she pointed out. “They are all moving forward.”
The Democrats’ goal is to pass this larger deal through a so-called budget settlement, which is a technical means that allows them to bypass the need for Republican support.
The Democrats have only a small majority in Congress, and most bills require Republican support. They used the same procedural measures in March to pass Biden’s $1.9 trillion dollar bill without Republican support. Epidemic relief plan.
