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.