Democrats are struggling to pass $3. 5 trillion social spending bill

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 Reuters - Divisions between progressives and moderates are bedeviling U.S. Democrats as they struggle to advance President Joe Biden's agenda, with the fate of $3.5 trillion social spending legislation they hope to pass hanging in the balance.

House of Representatives Majority Leader Joe Manchin told reporters on Tuesday that the proposed price tag could be lowered depending on what Democrats in the Senate, including moderate Senator Steny Hoyer, can support.

If Senate can't do 3.5, we have to see what the Senate can do.

Progressive Democrats expressed defiance in the House at that prospect.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman will not vote for a reconciliation package less than 3.5 billion, Jamaal Bowman declared outside Capitol.

Bowman says many other House lawmakers agreed with him. We have a meeting about this recently, so I can say at least 40. The comments illustrated the difficult path Democrats face in passing the bill embracing Biden's sweeping agenda with razor-thin majorityities and staunch Republican opposition.

Democrats cannot afford to lose more than three votes in the House, and none in the Senate, if they want to pass the package of childcare, education and green energy measures in the face of Republican resistance.

This week the picture grew complicated as Republicans reasserted their vow not to help Democrats raise the debt limit before mid-October deadline.

That means that Democrats could need to steer the debt limit bill through Congress without Republican support, posing potentially dire risks for the nation's economy if they fail.

Moderates like Manchin, who represents heavily GOP West Virginia, say they won't vote for $3.5 trillion in social spending. He pressed public for a total of $1.5 trillion to $1 trillion. This is anathema to progressives. Another House progressive, Representative Rashida Tlaib, said she was absolutely concerned by social spending package being cut too much.

My township has the third poorest congressional district in the country and I think people don't realize my folks have been waiting for this kind of bold investment, she said on Monday evening.

We have schools with no clean drinking water contaminated with lead. Right now we have many frontline communities that tell us to do something about climate, said Tlaib, whose district includes part of Detroit.

Other progressive Democrats, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, suggest that scaling back the plan could ultimately reach a point where something is worse than nothing at all.

Ocasio-Cortez said a $1 trillion pending infrastructure bill that passed the Senate and is pending in the House is a perfect example, because it was not only inadequate on the spending front, but her climate provisions would actually be harmful in her view.

There is absolutely a level where it is not just - something is actually better than nothing, but something can do more harm, Ocasio-Cortez told reporters. If we really hold firm on our line, why do we still wait?