House Democrats are expecting an agreement on the framework of their massive social welfare spending deal in the next few hours. The spending deal has been stalled for weeks due to disagreements within the Democrats Party, the bill is tied to a bipartisan infrastructure package that liberals have blocked until the spending package was secured.
The Washington Examiner reports:
“The president has been working hard on this, and the speaker’s been working hard on it, and so there’s a lot of work that has been done,” Hoyer told reporters. “I think it could come together quickly in the next few hours.”
Democrats want a spending framework that would cost less than $2 trillion and be paid for in part with a tax hike impacting billionaires.
The tax hike was modified after centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said she would not back hiking corporate taxes from 21% to 26.5%, and fellow centrist Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia signaled that a plan to allow the IRS to examine bank accounts could also be scrapped.
So far there’s no specific text on the tax hikes, however, Democrats are barreling towards an October 31 deadline. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted that Democrats were quickly running out of time.
“There’s not that much more time,” Pelosi told reporters. “We have to have decisions largely today or a little bit into tomorrow, so we can proceed.”