Biden hopes his shrunken spending framework is a big enough deal

President Joe Biden was aspiring to be the next Franklin Roosevelt when aides first started drafting his sprawling social welfare and climate spending proposal during the campaign.

Roosevelt delivered the New Deal — Biden described his former boss Barack Obama’s passage of a healthcare law as a “big f***ing deal.” Now Biden and his Democratic allies are frantically defending his updated $1.75 trillion partisan framework in the hope it will be “historic” enough to compensate for the drama it has caused and help his party hold on to its congressional majorities next year.