Key House progressive still awaiting Senate vote on broader set of social safety nets

Democratic leaders and the White House on Thursday laid a $ 2.1 trillion in revenue in an effort to forge an agreement between moderates and progressives to adopt President Biden’s agenda.

The proposal is fluid, but the number serves as the basis on which officials are working to strike a deal around the elements of climate, home and child care and health care, according to two people familiar with the efforts. .

The idea is not to lock in a specific final list of policy arrangements – and several different ones have been proposed as potentially inbound or outbound – but rather an effort to merge behind what can be broadly agreed upon within that level of spending.

This rough sketch, however, did not suit Sen. Joe Manchin, who, after more than two hours in hiding with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, then White House officials appeared around 10 p.m. ET to announce that he was not seeing no way forward for an agreement. Thursday evening.,

White House officials have made it clear behind closed doors, according to several people familiar with the conversations, that they need to see a number equal to or greater than $ 2 trillion in order to have any chance of bringing progressives on board. .

Manchin’s work theory can be improved upon (and his refusal to respond directly to CNN’s Manu Raju about whether $ 1.5 trillion was his absolute cap has been closely noted by White House officials), and progressives, knowing Manchin’s position, could go down given the stakes and, real historical scale of even $ 2 trillion.

Manchin, even as he emerged from a late-night meeting with key Biden negotiators, made it clear he was still at $ 1.5 trillion.

No progressive has approved anything as low as $ 2 trillion at this point, and the public position has said nothing about a framework – only Senate action on an actual proposal.