Politico has piece on what Democrats ‘want’ to stuff into their last effort to bypass Republicans filibuster veto power….
I do NOT think all of the stuff listed in the below is gonna make the final cut…
But Hope Springs Eternal….
Top Democrats are finalizing the bones of a multitrillion-dollar partisan spending plan designed to ride alongside a bipartisan infrastructure deal — and attempting to squeeze as many priorities as they can into their GOP-free shopping cart.
Masterminded by Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the public blueprint is expected as early as this week, setting an ambitious spending ceiling for passing the dream policies that won’t make it in any bipartisan infrastructure package. Because Democrats only get one more crack this year at passing a bill that doesn’t require any support from Senate Republicans, every lawmaker in the majority party is lobbying to push their priorities into the final package passed using the filibuster protections of so-called budget reconciliation.
They’ll continue to scuffle over its exact contents in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, pieces of the plan will simultaneously die at the hands of the Senate parliamentarian, who is tasked with deciding what’s allowed under the advantageous — but limiting — reconciliation process.
“We’re gonna get yeses and nos. We know that,” said Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “The most important thing is we go big. The public wants us to go big. We make a difference for a generation on some of these issues.”
The core of the package is expected to deliver on the parts of Biden’s $1.8 trillion “families” plan and $2.3 trillion “jobs” proposal that don’t get included in the separate bipartisan deal, including the president’s pitch for universal prekindergarten, two years of free community college, extending the expanded child tax credit and creating a paid family and medical leave program. But a bevy of other liberal policy ambitions also stand a chance….
More on the Dem’s Budget plan…..
Top Democrats announced on Tuesday evening that they had reached agreement on an expansive $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, including plans to pour money into addressing climate change and expanding Medicare among an array of other Democratic priorities, that they plan to advance alongside a bipartisan infrastructure deal.
Combined with nearly $600 billion in new spending on physical infrastructure contained in the bipartisan plan, which omits many of Democrats’ highest ambitions, the measure is intended to deliver on President Biden’s $4 trillion economic proposal. The budget blueprint, expected to be dominated by spending, tax increases and programs that Republicans oppose, would pave the way for a Democrats-only bill that leaders plan to push through Congress using a process known as reconciliation, which shields it from a filibuster.
To push the package — and the reconciliation bill that follows — through the evenly divided Senate, Democrats will have to hold together every member of their party and the independents aligned with them over what promises to be unified Republican opposition. It was not clear if all 50 lawmakers in the Democratic caucus had signed off the blueprint, which is considerably smaller than the $6 trillion some progressives had proposed but larger than some moderates had envisioned.
Mr. Biden was set to attend lunch on Wednesday with Democrats, his first in-person lunch with the caucus since taking office, to rally the party around the plan and kick off the effort to turn it into a transformative liberal package. The blueprint, and subsequent bill, will also have to clear the House, where Democrats hold a razor-thin margin….
More…