Joe Biden confirmed he will cut his social spending plan: “It won’t be $ 3.5 trillion”

President Joe Biden and members of Congress approached a deal on Tuesday on by how much they will reduce their ambitious spending plan Although the president has publicly stated that the measures will cause the country to lose its “advantage” in global competitiveness.

Biden traveled to Michigan to promote the proposal for a broader safety net, health and environment programs, but after his speech, he acknowledged the inevitable as Democrats now focus on a $ 2 trillion plan to rally support.

“I wanna make sure we got a package everyone can agree onBiden told reporters. “It will not be 3.5 trillion. it will be less”. And he added: “We will.”

There were strong signs on Capitol Hill that Democrats were rallying to Biden’s proposal to push through a $ 2,000 billion plan. a figure that seemed potentially acceptable to Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the only two to have expressed their objection to high public spending. With all Republicans against, Biden cannot lose the support of any senator from his party.

At the same time, new battle lines have formed as Democrats decide which of the many programs they want to expand – health, education, child care, climate change – will stay in the final proposal, be scaled back, or left behind. next to.

This debate leaves the progressive sectors unhappy, which rejects such a large reduction compared to the initial plan. According to the Washington Post, Biden’s new proposal has not satisfied the left wing of his party, whose Lower House leader Pramila Jayapal has advocated a minimum of $ 2.5 trillion.

Although this figure does not correspond to that suggested by the President, This is a sign that the White House has succeeded in bringing the positions of this sector closer, which last week did not budge from the initial 3.5 trillion.

On the moderate side, Manchin said on Tuesday he was not “ruling out” approving the roughly $ 2 trillion range proposed by Biden, even though he had initially said the maximum he would agree to spend was of 1,500 billion.

And as a sign of how much the bill might change by the time it hits your desk, Biden later suggested he would sign the measure even if it included Hyde’s controversial amendment., which prevents the use of federal funds for most abortions. Manchin wants it included in the final version of the proposal, which Progressive Democrats oppose. “I would sign it anyway,” Biden told reporters.

In his speech at a union training center, the president noted that those who oppose his measure are “accomplices in the decline of the United States” and argued that his plan is vital to American competitiveness. In addition, he said he wanted to “clarify some things” on his agenda and put aside what he called “noise” in Washington.

“The United States is still the world’s largest economy, we still have the most productive workers and the most innovative minds in the world, but we risk losing our advantage as a nation“, did he declare.

The President spoke about his plans in more detail than he had done recently, after spending last week mired in the details of the negotiations on Capitol Hill.

Underline the most popular parts of the proposal, like funding early childhood education and investing to tackle climate change, rather than commenting on the high total. And he pointed out that the plan’s billions of dollars will be spent over the course of a decade and paid for in tax increases on businesses and the wealthiest Americans.

Polls suggest parts of his spending plan and a related $ 1 trillion infrastructure bill – such as expanded child care options and highway and bridge projects – are popular with a large part of the population. But even some of the White House’s closest allies fear that not enough has been done to sell the initiative. That prompted Biden to hit the road again on Tuesday to promote his initiatives in Democratic Representative Elissa Slotkin’s district.

The initial plan, worth $ 3.5 trillion over 10 years, represents half of defense spending.

“These proposals are not about left versus right or moderates versus progressives,” Biden said. “These proposals are about competitiveness as opposed to complacency. To oppose these investments is to be complicit in the decline of the United States», He condemned.

(With information from AP and EFE)

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