A Social Policy ‘Framework’ Fails to Secure a Biden Victory

WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday unveiled his outline for a $1.85 trillion social safety net and environmental bill, imploring Democrats to put aside their differences and embrace a plan to provide universal prekindergarten, generous support for child care costs and the largest investment ever to combat climate change.

But his appeal for Democrats to unite and hand him a long-delayed victory on his domestic agenda fell flat, as liberals demanded assurances that the package would survive before they would agree to an immediate vote on a separate $1 trillion infrastructure bill. That left Mr. Biden empty-handed as he departed for Europe, where he had hoped to point to progress on both measures as proof that American democracy still works.

By Thursday evening, with Mr. Biden heading for Rome aboard Air Force One, the House Progressive Caucus had slammed the door shut on prospects of a quick win.

“Members of our caucus will not vote for the infrastructure bill without the Build Back Better Act,” the group said in a joint statement, using the name of the president’s social policy and climate bill.

It would provide preschool for more than six million 3- and 4-year-olds, child care and health care subsidies, monthly payments for families with children and $555 billion for programs to wean Americans from fossil fuels.

The day’s drama at the Capitol at once fleshed out the details of legislation that Speaker Nancy Pelosi called “spectacular” and underscored the deep rifts and wells of distrust within the party that Mr. Biden and top Democrats have been unable to overcome.

The president joined House Democrats in the Capitol on Thursday morning, hoping that by personally detailing his framework and projecting confidence about a compromise, he could paper over outstanding disputes about what should be in the plan. Doing so, he hoped, would unstick the infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate in August but has been held captive in the House by liberals demanding their legislative priorities: social policy and climate change.

Mr. Biden delayed his departure for Europe to plead for a victory.

“We have a framework that will get 50 votes in the United States Senate,” Mr. Biden privately told House Democrats, according to a person familiar with his remarks. “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week.”

But while the president found plenty of support for his plan — whose major components were still being debated even as he presented it — he departed for Rome with both prongs of his domestic agenda still hanging in limbo in a divided Congress.

Liberals said they trusted Mr. Biden to deliver on his outline, but that sentiment did not extend to Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, crucial centrist holdouts whose concerns have forced Democrats to whittle down the package and jettison some of the left’s top priorities. The pair privately told associates that they supported the president’s latest proposal, but neither publicly promised to back it. Representative Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri,…