Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.,holds her weekly news conference on Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021. Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Sunday that Democrats are close to reaching a deal on President Joe Biden’s social spending bill and will lock it down by the end of next week. Pelosi told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Democrats have “90 percent of the bill agreed to and written, we just have some of the last decisions to be made.”
Tapper asked if there would be a deal by the time President Biden leaves for Europe Thursday or Friday, and Pelosi said, “I think we’re pretty much there now.”
“You think you have a deal now?” Tapper asked. “We’re almost there,” Pelosi replied.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Democrats are "almost there" on an agreement on a social safety net bill which would also allow the bipartisan infrastructure bill to move forward.
"I think we pretty much have a deal now," she tells @jaketapper. "…I think we're pretty much there now." pic.twitter.com/i5OG4SzAGN
— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) October 24, 2021
The bill started out as a $3.5 trillion package that included family leave, child care, Medicare expansion, climate action, and free community college. Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have opposed the bill, which is now down to about $2 trillion.
Pelosi acknowledged that Democrats couldn’t agree on the bill as it was first proposed, so what’s on the table now is “less than what we had projected to begin with but it is still bigger than anything we have ever done in terms of addressing the needs of America’s working families.”
