华盛顿-总统乔·拜登对于他雄心勃勃的议程来说，正进入至关重要的两周，争取在国内截止日期和在全球舞台上展示他的政府成就的机会之前完成有争议的国会谈判。
拜登和他的民主党同僚正努力在月底前弥合党内分歧，以通过一项两党基础设施法案和一项更大的社会服务一揽子计划。总统希望在空军一号于10月28日飞往欧洲参加两次世界领导人峰会之前敲定这两个问题，包括多年来最雄心勃勃的气候变化会议。
但这一目标已被民主党内部的分裂所破坏，危及承诺的应对气候变化的全面新努力的命运。党内也越来越担心弗吉尼亚州的州长竞选，以及即将到来的参议院对联邦债务限额和政府资金的争夺，这可能会分散总统议程的注意力。
在经历了一段艰难的时期后，拜登正试图稳定自己的总统职位，这段时期的标志是阿富汗战争的动荡结束、与长期盟友的外交争端以及新冠肺炎案件的激增，这些案件扰乱了该国的经济复苏，并导致他的民调数字大幅下降。
他的团队继续其策略——在竞选期间和今年早些时候，这一策略很好地发挥了作用——阻挡了外界的噪音，专注于一项独特的任务，这一次是通过由两部分组成的一揽子计划，这将为民主党人在明年的中期选举中提供一个竞选平台。
拜登周五在康涅狄格州推动该法案时表示:“在我看来，这些法案实际上是关于竞争力与自满、机会与衰退，以及领导世界或继续让世界由我们推动。
然而，在白宫呼吁耐心的背后——提醒人们艰难的事情需要时间——是一种沸腾的紧迫感，即需要迅速达成协议。
新闻秘书珍·普萨基(Jen Psaki)周一表示，拜登周末与议员们进行了接触，并计划周二在白宫接待温和派和进步派民主党议员，称拜登“对谈判速度加快感到鼓舞。”
她说:“我们正处于一个紧要关头，我们感到推进工作的紧迫性，会议的召开反映了这一点。
对于白宫来说，有明确的目标日期，包括交通资金的月底截止日期和拜登即将进行的外交访问。但也有更抽象的要求:证明民主党人能够兑现对选民的承诺，保护拜登日渐式微的政治资本。
两名不愿透露姓名的白宫官员表示，政府最近几天向国会山发出了新的紧急信号，即现在是结束谈判的时候了，需要达成一项协议，因为他们没有被授权公开讨论私人谈话。官员们表示，拜登本人已经表达了不耐烦，并将在本周增加自己的个人外联活动，以推动议员们找到妥协方案，并将法案付诸表决。
西翼官员仍对最终达成协议持乐观态度，但也有人担心，混乱、旷日持久的谈判给拜登旨在向选民提供的切实利益蒙上了阴影。
拜登上周前往康涅狄格州哈特福德展示大幅降低幼儿保育成本的举措时，试图解决其中一些问题——这可能是唯一一项锁定最终方案的立法。
就连民主党领导人也在缩小一揽子计划的整体价格标签以赢得更多选票的最佳方式上存在分歧。拜登周五表示，他倾向于包括所有的愿望清单提案，但会缩减项目的长度以削减成本。他的想法是，未来的国会可以稍后投票，延长美国人民会觉得受欢迎的项目。
但几天前，众议院议长南希·佩洛西提出了相反的策略——批准一套更窄的项目，以持续更长的时间。
一些民主党人推动两党在10月31日之前通过基础设施协议，即使更大的社会服务一揽子计划没有解决，许多进步人士不喜欢这一举措，因为他们可能会失去后一项法案的杠杆作用。
气候变化条款的命运尤其危险。
西弗吉尼亚州参议员乔·曼钦(Joe Manchin)反对一项旨在加快美国摆脱化石燃料的计划，这威胁到拜登在即将于苏格兰举行的全球会议上试图在这个问题上确立美国领导地位之前应对气候变化计划的核心。
普萨基周一表示:“这些立法包含气候成分，它们将解决气候危机，这一点绝对至关重要。”但他拒绝具体说明白宫打算如何调整一揽子计划，以赢得曼钦的支持。
民主党在国会参众两院的微弱优势让像曼钦和亚利桑那州参议员基尔斯顿·西内马这样的个别议员获得了权力，这让其他议员和白宫感到恼火。官员们表示，白宫助手们没有放弃清洁能源计划，但正在探索替代方法，将各种减排政策结合起来。
放弃这些条款可能会让拜登在格拉斯哥受伤。在这次峰会上，政府认为这是一个至关重要的机会，不仅可以应对气候变化，还可以在唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)总统执政四年后，重申美国在这个问题上的领导地位。美国将为这次会议留下重要的足迹，包括前总统巴拉克·奥巴马，但它有可能落后于已经采取更具体措施减排的欧洲国家。
拜登将于11月初访问苏格兰，此前他将参加在罗马举行的世界领导人峰会。但是中国习近平主席决定不参加会议——推迟两个超级大国领导人的首次会晤——可能会降低会议的相关性。不过，拜登预计将在意大利会见法国总统埃马纽埃尔·马克龙，两人希望修复关系。此前，美国与澳大利亚的潜艇交易破坏了法国的一份合同，并导致法国从华盛顿短暂撤回大使。
同样迫在眉睫的是11月2日弗吉尼亚州的州长选举，这被认为是对拜登和民主党明年重新控制国会的机会的公投。
此前担任该州州长的特里·麦考利夫(Terry McAuliffe)与共和党商人格伦·扬金(Glenn Youngkin)的竞争比预期的要激烈，拜登去年在该州以10个百分点的优势获胜。
麦考利夫出人意料地公开批评政府的立法策略，敦促民主党人在选举日之前通过基础设施法案，让他向选民展示一些东西。白宫官员私下预计麦考利夫将以微弱优势胜出，并认为他们可以忽略对胜率低于预期的担忧。
但是，一个紧张的结果，或者扬金的胜利，可能会让民主党人对拜登的政治支持感到不确定——这可能会使他们不太可能为他的议程进行高风险的投票——并将鼓舞共和党人进入中期选举。
Crunch time: Biden faces critical next 2 weeks for agenda
WASHINGTON -- PresidentJoe Bidenis entering a crucial two weeks for his ambitious agenda, racing to conclude contentious congressional negotiations ahead of both domestic deadlines and a chance to showcase his administration’s accomplishments on a global stage.
Biden and his fellow Democrats are struggling to bridge intraparty divides by month’s end to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a larger social services package. The president hopes to nail down both before Air Force One lifts off for Europe on Oct. 28 for a pair of world leader summits, including the most ambitious climate change meeting in years.
But that goal has been jeopardized by fractures among Democrats, imperiling the fate of promised sweeping new efforts to grapple with climate change. There's also rising anxiety within the party about a bellwether gubernatorial contest in Virginia and looming Senate fights over the federal debt limit and government funding that could distract from getting the president’s agenda across the finish line.
Biden is trying to stabilize his presidency after a difficult stretch marked by the tumultuous end of the Afghanistan war, a diplomatic spat with a longtime ally and a surge in COVID-19 cases that rattled the nation’s economic recovery and sent his poll numbers tumbling.
His team has continued its strategy — one that served it well during the campaign and earlier this year — of blocking out the outside noise to stay focused on a singular mission, this time to pass the two-part package that will give Democrats a platform on which to run in next year’s midterm elections.
“These bills, in my view, are literally about competitiveness versus complacency, about opportunity versus decay, and about leading the world or continuing to let the world move by us,” Biden said Friday while pushing the legislation in Connecticut.
Yet beneath the White House’s pleas for patience — reminding people that hard things take time — is a bubbling sense of urgency that a deal needs to be struck rapidly.
Press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that Biden spent the weekend engaging with lawmakers and planned to host both moderate and progressive Democratic lawmakers at the White House on Tuesday, saying Biden was “encouraged by accelerated pace of talks.”
“We are at a point where we feel an urgency to move things forward and the pickup of meetings is a reflection of that," she said.
For the White House, there are the explicit target dates, including an end-of-month deadline on transportation funding and Biden’s upcoming foreign trip. But there are also more abstract imperatives: proving Democrats can deliver on their promises to voters and protecting Biden’s waning political capital.
With new urgency, the administration has sent signals to Capitol Hill in recent days that it is time to wrap up negotiations, that a deal needs to be reached, according to two White House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations. Biden himself has expressed impatience and will be increasing his own personal outreach this week to push lawmakers to find a compromise and bring the bills to a vote, the officials said.
West Wing officials are still optimistic that an agreement will ultimately be struck, but there are also fears that the messy, drawn-out negotiation has clouded the tangible benefits of what Biden aims to deliver to voters.
Biden sought to address some of that when he traveled to Hartford, Connecticut, last week to showcase initiatives to sharply reduce the cost of early childhood care — perhaps one of the only pieces of the legislation that is a lock to make the final package.
Even Democratic leaders are divided on the best way to shrink the overall price tag of the package in order to win over more votes. Biden said Friday he prefers including all of the wish-list proposals, but trimming down the length of the programs to cut costs. His thinking is that a future Congress can vote later to extend programs that the American people will find popular.
But days earlier, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested the opposite tack — approving a narrower set of programs to last for a longer time period.
Some Democrats have pushed for passing the bipartisan infrastructure deal by Oct. 31 even if the larger social services package is not settled, a move many progressives dislike because they could lose leverage for the latter bill.
The fate of climate change provisions is particularly perilous.
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s objections to a program aimed at speeding the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels threatens the heart of Biden’s plans to combat climate change just before he tries to assert American leadership on the issue at the upcoming global conference in Scotland.
“It is absolutely pivotal that these pieces of legislation have climate components and they will to address the climate crisis," Psaki said Monday while declining to specify how the White House was aiming to adapt the package to win Manchin's support.
The Democrats’ razor-thin margins in both houses of Congress have empowered individual lawmakers like Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, vexing fellow lawmakers and the White House. White House aides have not abandoned the clean energy program but are exploring alternate means to string together a mix of policies to cut emissions, officials said.
Abandoning the provisions could wound Biden in Glasgow, at a summit that the administration has held out as a vital opportunity not just to combat climate change but to reassert U.S. leadership on the issue after four years of retrenchment under President Donald Trump. The United States will be bringing a major footprint to the gathering — including former President Barack Obama — but it risks falling behind European nations that have taken more concrete steps to cut emissions.
Biden’s stop in Scotland early in November will follow his participation in a summit of world leaders in Rome. But Chinese President Xi Jinping's decision to skip the gatherings — delaying the first meeting between the leaders of the two superpowers — could diminish their relevance. Still, Biden is expected to meet in Italy with French President Emmanuel Macron as the men look to repair relations after a U.S. submarine deal with Australia scuttled a French contract and led the French to briefly withdraw their ambassador from Washington.
Also looming is the Nov. 2 gubernatorial election in Virginia, which is regarded as a referendum on Biden and the Democrats’ chances of retraining control over Congress next year.
Terry McAuliffe, who previously served as the state’s governor, is locked in a closer-than-expected race with Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin in a state that Biden won by 10 points last year.
McAuliffe has been surprisingly public in his criticism of the administration’s legislative strategy, urging Democrats to pass the infrastructure bill before Election Day to give him something to show voters. White House officials privately expect McAuliffe to emerge with a narrow win and believe they can ignore worries about a smaller-than-expected margin of victory.
But a tight outcome, or a Youngkin win, could rattle Democrats uncertain about Biden’s political coattails — potentially making them less likely to take risky votes for his agenda — and would buoy Republicans heading into the midterms.
