Pelosi on spending bill: ‘I think we are pretty much there now’

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) indicated on Sunday that Democrats would reach an agreement this week on President Biden’s social spending bill.

“We have 90 percent of the bill agreed to and written. We just have some of the last decisions to be made,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I think we are pretty much there now,” Pelosi said when asked if an agreement would be reached before the president leaves for Europe on Friday.

Pelosi also said the scaled-back plan is still set for an Oct. 31 vote, when federal highway funding expires.

“There was no deadline that was missed because of the progressives. The deadline was missed because they changed from $3.5 [trillion] to one half of that,” Pelosi added.

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

“Because the bill is not written yet, we hope it will be written today and introduced tomorrow, only then can the joint tax committee evaluate what it brings in,” Pelosi noted of plans to fund the new plan. 

When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if she was frustrated by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema‘s (D-Ariz.) opposition to the initial $3.5 trillion package, Pelosi said she was “respectful of everybody’s point of view.”

During a CNN town hall Thursday, Biden indicated some concern that Sinema’s opposition to tax increases for wealthy individuals and corporations could cause problems in terms of funding the final package. But on Sunday, Pelosi was less concerned.

“We’re going to fully pay for the plan. We will probably more than pay for the plan,” she told Tapper. 

Pelosi acknowledged the new package was far less than initially proposed but said that the plan would be “transformative.”

“It is less than we had projected to begin with, but it is still bigger than anything we’ve ever done in terms of addressing the needs of America’s working families,” she said.