By Sam Ozer-Staton

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden hit the road to tout his infrastructure plan, a major legislative priority that has lost steam in recent weeks as negotiations in Congress have grown more tenuous, and, by the White House’s own admission, more confusing. Ahead of Biden’s trip to Illinois, White House press secretary Jen Psaki made a revealing concession: “[T]he reconciliation package, no one knows what that means,” she said, before adding: “What [Biden’s] going to do is break down all the specific details."

The White House’s decision to take the infrastructure pitch directly to the American people represents a sharp departure from the months of backroom deal-making that has led to a fragile agreement. Biden’s strategy involves not one piece of infrastructure legislation but two. The first bill, “The American Jobs Plan,” reflects a framework agreed to last month by a bipartisan group of Senators including, among others, Mitt Romney (R-UT), Susan Collins (R-ME), Mark Warner D-VA), and Jon Tester (D-MT). That proposed deal would cost $1.2 trillion over eight years, a figure well short of the $2.25 trillion proposal Biden outlined in March. It also lacks the kind of investments in workforce training, childcare, and climate-related infrastructure that liberals in Congress have championed (and Republicans have vehemently opposed). That has caused Biden to propose a second sweeping bill, “The American Families Act,” which includes key items from the Democrats’ wishlist and would need to pass the Senate by a party-line vote in which Vice President Kamala Harris casts the tie-breaking vote.

The unusual legislative arrangement has forced Biden and Democratic congressional leaders to attempt to thread a needle: keep enough Democrats on board for the partisan “reconciliation” package without alienating the moderate Republicans necessary to pass the bipartisan bill.