Senate Democrats said they reached a framework for a $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation proposal they will attempt to move in the upper chamber without Republican support alongside a bipartisan infrastructure proposal.
“The budget resolution with instructions will be $3.5 trillion,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a press conference Tuesday night. “Add that to the $600 billion in the bipartisan plan, you get to $4.1 trillion, which is very, very close to what President Biden asked us for.”
REPUBLICANS SLAM BREAKS ON SPEEDY PASSAGE OF BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE DEAL
The New York Democrat said that “every major program” President Joe Biden asked for in his original American Families Plan will be funded “in a robust way,” plus some additions.
In the deal is a major item on Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s wish list: “Robust expansion of Medicare,” Schumer said.
“Including money for dental, vision, and hearing,” the Democrat added.
Biden will attend Democrats’ weekly caucus lunch on Wednesday to discuss the plan.
“What this legislation does is it says, ‘We’re going to create millions of good-paying union jobs, rebuilding this country not only from a physical infrastructure but dealing with the human beings of our country,’” Sanders told reporters.
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Because both chambers of Congress and the White House are controlled by Democrats, the evenly divided Senate has employed the “budget reconciliation” process to pass large spending packages. That lets Democrats bypass the Senate’s cloture rule requiring at least 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, which means 10 Republicans would need to cross the political divide if all Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them stick together on a proposal.
Republicans long criticized Biden’s American Families Plan and its “human infrastructure” provisions that included social programs that do not fit the common definition of physical infrastructure, such as roads and bridges.
