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This week, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will meet with key members of the Senate Budget Committee including President Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator who rallies with Democrats, to begin discussions about how to effectively write and pass the budget that can pass A variety of assembly in the committee.
The budget document is the first step in the settlement process and sets up a fence for what any infrastructure bill could include. The budget will provide a dollar amount for each committee to spend and these goals will instruct key committees to rewrite the tax code and reimagine the country’s social safety net into the infrastructure bill.
Ensuring that legislation will qualify under reconciliation is important because this process requires passage of a simple majority of senators, unlike most other legislation that needs 60 votes to advance. With the Democratic bloc controlling only 50 seats, the reconciliation gives them a chance to pass certain legislation without Republican votes.
Aides familiar with the plans tell CNN that the bipartisan path and the budget compromise path can work in tandem and that even if Democrats and Republicans are able to come together in a modest bipartisan infrastructure package — a framework unveiled last week — it is still out There is likely to be a path of reconciliation for Democrats to pass more sweeping reforms and tax changes that are a cornerstone of Biden’s legislative agenda.
This budget process is expected to be more risky than the one that unfolded when Democrats passed the Covid-19 relief bill earlier this year, sources say. As a Democratic source told CNN, “Every Democratic priority from the past 40 years is about to be narrowed to a single bill.”
The budget will only provide a framework for the Democrats’ only infrastructure bill. However, in order to ensure committees have enough flexibility, Democratic leaders need to think ahead about what they ultimately want to include in the infrastructure bill to set the right goals. The goal is to pass the budget next month.
It has not yet been decided how and whether Democrats will include a blanket overhaul of how prescription drugs are paid in this proposal, how big a bill Democrats can actually support, and what kinds of changes to state policies on climate change and the care economy could actually be. It took place under a strict budget process. Democrats will also decide how much they want to get from the 2017 Republican tax bill in order to pay for their proposal.
One challenge is that Democrats will be governed by a strict set of rules about what they can and cannot include in reconciliation. Some of these questions will not be answered for weeks, which is why aides say it is important that the committees start working now. Questions remain, for example, about whether you can include a permanent expansion of the child tax credit or a comprehensive overhaul of the paid family leave policy in private businesses.
The Finance Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee are expected to receive much of the responsibility for writing the infrastructure bill for Democrats only, sources say.
The Democrats won’t be able to go it alone, however, unless the moderate members agree to the process — most notably Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kirsten Sinema of Arizona. This still has to be done.
But, several Democratic aides tell CNN that the infrastructure effort is so complex that committees will have to start their work now in order to prepare if such a possibility occurs.
“The complicating factor now is that you have to let this happen,” said one Democratic aide. “Members have to come to conclusions for themselves.”
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