Palms open and arms raised, as if he would like to knock down an invisible obstacle, Joe Biden stops in front of the journalists. The American president is on Capitol Hill, this Friday 1er October, a rare trip within the confines of legislative power, indicating the gravity of the moment. At his side advances Nancy Pelosi, the president of the House of Representatives, broken like him in the knotty negotiations with the elected officials.
Joe Biden just addressed Democrats, and more specifically, members of the Progressive Group. The stake is, neither more nor less, its trace in history. That of a president with unforeseen reformist daring, or that of a leader with intentions hampered by the divisions of his own camp, with a majority too narrow to afford dissent.
Joe Biden hardly lingers in front of the microphones. Enough to loosen, with one sentence, the grip of a calendar that he had nevertheless chosen himself. “It doesn’t matter if it’s six minutes, six days, or six weeks. We’re gonna finish the job. “ The job in question consists of two major pieces of legislation: a text on infrastructure with 1,200 billion dollars (1,030 billion euros) and the social package of “Build Back Better” (BBB), an overhaul of the American welfare state.
Democrats unanimously support the first, but are torn over the scope of the second, and the need to pass both texts at the same time. Nancy Pelosi had multiplied these last days the voluntarist remarks, to encourage moderates and progressives to overcome their divisions. She assured that the text on infrastructure would be adopted on September 30. He hasn’t been. The White House advisers, however, walked the corridors of the Capitol, from 3 p.m. to midnight.
A calendar that has become untenable
The progressives group in the House of Representatives, with 95 members, has achieved a political coup, showing its strength in a time of crisis. He refused to vote for the first text until the second was also committed by a vote in the Senate. These elected officials thus pose as uncompromising translators of Joe Biden’s reform ambitions.
However, the parameters of the BBB will have to be reviewed, so that the opposition of the two recalcitrant Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona) and Joe Manchin (West Virginia), is lifted. The latter has signified that he will not tolerate an envelope greater than 1.5 trillion dollars. Joe Biden hopes for a compromise between this figure and that claimed by the progressives, that is to say 3,500 billion dollars. An agreement around 2,000 billion would be a major success and an exceptional redistribution effort. But at this time, nothing guarantees. What to give up? To the free nursery, to student grants, to reimbursement of dental care, to climate measures?
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