A plan to expand Medicare with dental, vision and hearing benefits for tens of millions of seniors — and a pitch to guarantee paid family and medical leave to all U.S. workers — is now in danger of getting cut from Biden's social spending package entirely
Democrats are haggling over whether to drop two of the most popular elements of their social spending bill as negotiations reach the zero hour, according to a half-dozen sources close to the discussions.
The threat to these two centerpieces of the bill comes as Democrats push for an agreement on a framework for the broader social spending measure as soon as possible. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have said they want a deal by the end of this week, though Manchin and the White House still don’t see eye to eye on a topline number for the bill; Manchin has consistently said he supports $1.5 trillion.
In recent weeks, Biden had pitched lawmakers on converting the dental benefit — by far the most expensive and logistically challenging of the three Medicare expansions eyed for the bill — into an $800 annual voucher for care. Progressives, who have fought for decades against conservative efforts to convert Medicare into a voucher program, were
Sanders and other progressives already saw the benefits expansion as a significant concession, given they had originally pushed to lower the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60. Now, they say dropping the expansion entirely risks losing their votes for the broader bill.
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