Biden details Democratic talks as party tries to secure his sweeping agenda

By CNN Newsource

Published October 21, 2021 3:07 PM

By Maegan Vazquez, CNN

President Joe Biden on Thursday provided new insight into his ongoing negotiations with Democrats, laying out in the most specific terms to date what will and won’t be included in a compromise budget measure that contains the bulk of his sweeping domestic agenda.

The measure looks to expand the social safety net, combat climate change and raise taxes on the wealthy.

Biden flatly said during a CNN town hall in Baltimore that he would not support a work requirement for the child tax credit — a provision moderate West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is pushing for within the Democrats’ massive social spending bill. The President also confirmed to town hall moderator Anderson Cooper that a paid parental leave provision in his social safety net plan has been narrowed down from 12 weeks to 4 weeks.

It would be a “reach,” the President said, to include dental, vision and hearing coverage in Medicare, a key priority for progressives, saying Manchin opposed the provision — and that he believed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, was against it as well. Instead, he said he was working to include an $800 voucher for dental coverage and was still negotiating vision coverage.

Biden said it appeared unlikely he would get corporate tax hikes included in the plan amid opposition from Sinema. “I don’t think we are going to be able to get the vote,” he said.

And he indicated that money from a likely scrapped clean energy provision would be reallocated to other climate change programs.

“Joe (Manchin) is open to my convincing him that I can use it to increase environmental progress without it being that particular deal,” he said, referencing the Clean Electricity Performance Program, which would give utilities federal grants to increase their share of electricity from clean sources and penalize those who fail to increase their clean electricity portfolios.

“Nothing has been formally agreed to,” Biden added.

The details of the plan emerged in the midst of final-stage negotiations among Democrats, who have spent weeks sparring over what to include in the large spending package.

Biden was frank in describing the power of individual senators in the ongoing talks. “Look, in the United States Senate, when you have 50 Democrats, every one is the President,” he said.

Where negotiations stand

Despite clear compromises on some of his key agenda items, Biden expressed optimism Thursday that Democrats in Congress would reach an agreement on his administration’s bipartisan infrastructure package and a budget reconciliation bill.

“I do think we’ll get a deal,” he said.

Biden made clear to Democrats this week that his goal is to have a locked-in framework agreement that would clear the way for a House vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill before he arrives at the United Nations Climate Conference in Glasgow in less than two weeks.

During the town hall, however, he declined to say if he thought Democrats would pass either bill before he departs for Rome on Wednesday for the G20 Leaders Summit.

Other expected compromises to the spending bill include dropping two years of tuition-free community college and extending the child tax credit for just one additional year — much shorter than what many in the party had wanted.

Acknowledging the need for filibuster reform

During the town hall, Biden fielded other wide-ranging questions about the major challenges facing his presidency, focusing largely on domestic issues.

In his strongest terms to date, the President acknowledged that filibuster reform will be necessary to pass key items like voting rights legislation and debt limit increases, but that doing so now would hamper his ability to pass his economic agenda.

“We’re gonna have to move to the point where we fundamentally alter the filibuster,” Biden said, adding that it “remains to be seen exactly what that means in terms of fundamentally — on whether or not we just end the filibuster straight up.”

But he also said that if he waded into the debate on eliminating the filibuster at this moment, “I lose at least three votes right now to get what I have to get done on the economic side of the equation, the foreign policy side of the equation.”

The comments mark a shift from the President’s previous stance on the issue.

At a CNN town hall in July, for example, Biden said “There’s no reason to protect (the filibuster) other than you’re going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done. Nothing at all will get done. And there’s a lot at stake.”

Visiting the southern border

Biden said he hasn’t had a lot of time to get down to the US-Mexico border, arguing that he’s been traveling around the world and visiting domestic disaster sites instead.

Asked why he hasn’t visited the southern border of the United States, the President said, “I’ve been there before … I mean, I know it well.”

“I guess I should go down but the whole point of it is, I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to get down,” Biden continued, adding: “I’ve been spending time going around looking at the $900 billion damage done by hurricanes and floods and weather, and traveling around the world.”

He argued that “you’re not seeing a lot of pictures of kids lying on top of one another with … what looks like tarps on top of them,” but added that “there’s much more to be done.”

Migrants have arrived at the border this year in record numbers and the administration has been confronted by a number of border-related issues since Biden took office earlier this year.

Tackling labor shortages and Covid-19

Biden touched on efforts to secure the supply chain, recover from the pandemic, address inflation and remedy the labor shortage.

He attributed the labor shortage to a number of factors, including prospective employees’ demands for higher wages and lingering fears about the pandemic. And he suggested that inflation may not be a long-term issue if his legislative priorities are passed.

Pressed on whether he’d deploy the National Guard to alleviate pressure on the nation’s truckers amid shortages, Biden said, “The answer is yes, if we can’t move, increase the number of truckers, which we’re in a process of doing.”

A White House official shortly after, however, told CNN the administration is not actively considering deploying the National Guard to help ease the supply chain gridlock, despite the President’s comments. “Requesting the use of the National Guard at the state level is under the purview of governors and we are not actively pursuing the use of the National Guard on a federal level,” the White House official said.

The President said during the town hall that he believes police officers and first responders who refuse the Covid-19 vaccine should be forced to stay at home or be let go. The decision to implement those employment restrictions remains largely up to cities and municipalities.

Biden also walked back his past comments to members of the press suggesting individuals who refuse subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol should be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

“I should have chosen my words more wisely,” Biden said during the town hall.

“One of the things I was committed to do when I ran was, reestablish the reputation and integrity of the Justice Department,” the President said, adding, “I did not, have not and will not pick up the phone and call the attorney general and tell him what he should or should not do, in terms of who he should prosecute.”

This story has been updated with additional details from the town hall.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Allie Malloy, DJ Judd, Kate Sullivan, Jason Hoffman, Manu Raju, Phil Mattingly and Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.

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