WASHINGTON, Oct 19 Reuters - In the days ahead, U.S. President Joe Biden's depressing decades of congressional experience face a serious test as he tries to corral warring Democratic factions on massive spending and infrastructure bills.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has set October 31 as the deadline for the House to pass a $1.2 billion infrastructure deal that has already passed the Senate and has broad bipartisan support, but that deadline is looking increasingly unrealistic, according to sources briefed on negotiations inside and outside the White House.
Biden would meet separately with a group of moderate lawmakers on Tuesday afternoon that are insisting that Biden agree to a $3.5 trillion budget bill, and a more progressive group concerned about this level of spending and how to pay for it.
The liberal list includes Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a major mouthpiece of her group, but leaves out progressive firebrand Representative Pramilia Jayapal.
The moderate list has Senator Krysten Sinema but does not include two other Democrats who steadfastly refused to go along with a $3.5-trillion bill: Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Warner from Arizona.
On Tuesday morning at the White House, Manchin was spotted at the White House before the meeting; the White House said Biden met Manchin in the morning as well.
One of Biden's important selling points in the last year's presidential campaign was his ability to find a middle ground at a time of moderate political polarization, touting his 36 years as a Democratic U.S. senator from Delaware.
Weeks of negotiations, which white house officials say have been productive, have nevertheless failed to bridge the gap between the 2nd and 3rd Amendments to the 2016 House Budget Bill.
Biden said on Oct. 1, at his conference in Washington that he would find an agreement whether it's in six minutes, six days or six weeks but White House officials are increasingly concerned as the weeks tick by.
Administration officials have repeatedly refused to provide details on different components of the package - and possible tradeoffs - arguing that they do not want to negotiate in public. They point to concerted efforts by Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others to hammer out a solution in line with their commitment to combat climate change and restructure the U.S. economy to address longstanding inequities.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Biden has an urgency to move the process forward and that progress was being made in the wake of meetings with Manchin and Sinema on Tuesday morning.
These are serious policy discussions, often on nitty gritty details. They are not duels between factions of the party. The president bases this approach on five decades in Washington, which is a pretty good guide on how to get things done, she said.
Biden and White House officials have cautioned progressives that no compromise should be made on a $3.5 trillion bill, and that they need to lower their expectations. The Democrats' left wing is insisting on the full amount, arguing that is what is necessary to deliver what Biden promised voters.
Progressives refuse to go along with the Infrastructure Deal without agreement on the other spending bill. Terry McAuliffe has called for an agreement in time to help give a boost to democrat Warner's Nov. 2 bid for a second term as the governor of Virginia.
It is already possible that Biden could be forced to attend a climate summit in early November without a key piece of legislation confirmed - billions of dollars in spending he wants for his climate agenda.
The lack of concrete U.S. legislative changes in climate could thwart Biden's drive to convince the world that America is back and an international player again after Republican Donald Trump's four years of divisive global politics.
A senior administration official pushed back against the notion that failure to reach agreement before the G20 summit in Rome and the global talks on climate in late October and early November would undermine Biden's credibility. How well are we in this process. People can see that, said the official.
Manchin, the West Virginia senator, said he would not debate a carbon tax in the negotiations about the spending and infrastructure bills, even though some of his fellow Democrats in the Senate support it as a way to fight climate change.