President Joe Biden’s efforts to balance liberal demands for a partisan spending package with the bipartisan infrastructure deal he said he wanted has highlighted the challenges facing a divided Democratic Party with slim congressional majorities.
Progressive lawmakers had spent weeks pushing Biden to abandon talks with Senate Republicans over a much narrower version of his infrastructure proposal, which came with an initial price tag of roughly $2 trillion. Their objections prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Biden to back a strategy that requires any bipartisan deal to be passed alongside a much larger spending package on a party-line vote — undermining the chances of Republicans backing the deal.
And even though Biden’s conditions were a concession to the left wing of his party, some liberals continued to pan the bipartisan talks.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, criticized the lack of diversity among the group of Senate Republicans and Democrats who joined Biden at the White House on Thursday to announce that the president had signed on to their proposal.
“The diversity of this ‘bipartisan coalition’ pretty perfectly conveys which communities get centered and which get left behind when leaders prioritize bipartisan dealmaking over inclusive lawmaking,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
She added that passing the bipartisan deal without prioritizing the rest of Biden’s climate and social policies “isn’t acceptable.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, said the infrastructure framework was “pathetic” and “paltry,” and echoed the sentiments of other liberals demanding more spending, saying on Capitol Hill that he would not support the bipartisan deal without an “ironclad” commitment that progressive priorities would end up in the partisan legislation.
The frustration with Biden’s infrastructure negotiations comes as progressives have also expressed concerns that the president did not do more to fight for a voting reform bill, S. 1, that died on the Senate floor this week.
“We are a nation on the brink. We need [Biden] to step up and use every resource at his disposal to protect the right to vote and save our democracy,” said Rep. Mondaire Jones, a New York Democrat, on Thursday.
No Republicans supported S. 1, and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s opposition to it guaranteed the bill’s failure even if Democrats could have found a way to avoid the filibuster — something centrist Democrats have said they will not abolish.
But progressive lawmakers and activists questioned why Biden has not used his pulpit to pressure Congress on voting reform that they say is absolutely necessary to protect democracy.
Rahna Epting, executive director of the progressive group MoveOn, told Politico that Republicans are “going to be spewing lies and spewing this false narrative about the Democrats rigging everything.”
“And we need Biden to not just go toe-to-toe,” Epting said. “We need him to go on offense here, and we need him to be the champion that people voted for on this issue. And we just have not seen that level of prioritization.”
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, told CNN this week that Biden should dedicate more time to focusing on the voting rights fight.
“He’s not absent, but he needs to be a lot more vocal and a lot more out front,” Bowman said.
The Left’s insistence that a bipartisan infrastructure deal not advance without a partisan bill, which lawmakers hope to move through the Senate using a procedure known as reconciliation, which requires a simple majority vote, could doom the chances of the bipartisan deal that Biden has spent weeks pursuing.
Republicans signaled they might not go along with legislation that paves the way for the passage of an ambitious liberal package that they oppose, and Democrats need at least 10 of them to sign on in the Senate in order to move the deal.
But on issues ranging from gun control to foreign policy, progressives have grown increasingly impatient with Biden’s reluctance to stray too far from the center.
Progressives railed against him, for instance, during a conflict last month between Israel and Hamas, with several demanding the president show less deference to Israeli leaders and speak up more for the rights of Palestinians swept up in the violence.
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The razor-thin majorities Democrats have in both the House and Senate have exacerbated ideological tensions within the party.
Centrist Democrats Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema have drawn the ire of their Senate colleagues by opposing the removal of the filibuster, which requires 60 votes for virtually every piece of legislation and guarantees that Democrats can’t advance their most aggressive agenda items.
Manchin’s opposition to pursuing infrastructure policies without bipartisan support contributed significantly to the pressure on Biden to continue talks with Republicans despite demands from the other wing of his party to end them — because Manchin could have single-handedly stopped a partisan infrastructure package from moving.
