President Biden is expected to host a series of meetings on Wednesday with Democratic lawmakers, including party leaders, as he works to keep his party united around his $4 trillion economic agenda and iron out deep divisions over his policy proposals.
According to people familiar, Biden will meet with Senator Chuck Schumer from New York and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California.
The flurry of meetings comes as both pieces of his economic agenda — a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a second, expansive $3.5 trillion economic package that supporters intend to push through with only Democratic votes — appear imperiled as moderate and liberal Democrats jockey for leverage in a narrowly divided Congress.
Liberal Democrats insist that a majority in their ranks will block the Sept. 27 vote of the infrastructure bill. The bill cleared the Senate earlier this month, and the $3.5 trillion package passed the upper chamber via the fast-track reconciliation process.
For weeks, those in that wing of the party have insisted that their support for the infrastructure package is contingent on the scope and success of the larger package, which carries most of their ambitions but needs the backing of virtually every Democrat in Congress to avoid a Republican filibuster and get it to Mr. Biden’s desk.
The potential stalemate was brewing when Representative Pramila Jayapal from Washington State, chairwoman for the Congressional Progressive Caucus on Tuesday, left for a 90-minute meeting. Ms. Jayapal said she had requested the meeting to reiterate that “we need to be absolutely sure it is passed in the Senate, and so that’s still our position.”
But moderates, who pushed House Democratic leaders to set the Sept. 27 vote for the infrastructure legislation, remained confident that their liberal counterparts would ultimately support the package. Democrats are still negotiating over the structure and scope of the much larger economic package.
“This is critically important to the White House,” Representative Josh Gottheimer (a New Jersey Democrat) said that he was one of those moderates who pushed for this commitment. “I’m optimistic we’ll not only get it to the floor, but we’ll get the votes.”