Democrats' next political high-wire act: Selling their $3.5T budget deal

Top Senate Democrats are finally in array on a $3.5 trillion price tag for their party's momentous social spending plans. Their next task will be even tougher: selling it to the rest of their party.

The massive top-line number that Senate Budget Committee Democrats released Tuesday night affords plenty of room to spend on President Joe Biden’s priorities, from child care to fighting climate change. But just because Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) climbed down from his initial hopes of a $6 trillion spending plan doesn't mean that his fellow progressives will fall in line as easily. And on the other end of the party's ideological spectrum are leery moderates who want to see as much of the bill paid for as possible.

Further complicating Democrats’ ambitious goals, a bipartisan group of senators has yet to release legislative text for the $1 trillion infrastructure deal that won Biden's endorsement for last month — a bill that would move separately but could be crucial to the success of the partisan budget blueprint. To achieve both goals at once would require political agility of Olympic proportions.

Even as they closed in on their budget agreement, Senate Democrats knew that a deal among Budget panel members wouldn't guarantee support among their entire caucus. Biden's appearance at their Wednesday lunch meeting is aimed at helping things along.

“The key is, we’ve just got to get to a place where we know we got all 50 Dems,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). “We’re getting close, but as you know, there’s multiple steps to getting close on kind of a general agreement ... that’s not the same as then getting close on the bill itself.”

Democratic leaders are gaming out several scenarios for muscling through the behemoth one-party spending bill given their razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate. Among the scenarios under consideration earlier this week was for House Democrats to vote on the party’s budget blueprint first, reasserting the lower chamber’s role in a process that has publicly been seen as more Senate-driven, according to several Democratic aides. By Wednesday, however, that approach seemed less likely.