How Biden's ambitious agenda is being nibbled away

Joe Biden's legislative ambitions are undergoing a serious haircut — bits of his agenda are being snipped, chopped or dropped.

He took office with a transformative program touching climate change, health care, child policy, immigration and taxes.

He's still urgently trying to push through changes on these fronts and will be in Pennsylvania today promoting them.

But a cold political reality has set in. Biden lacks the congressional super-majorities of past transformative liberal presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

Those game-changing Democratic presidents benefited from their party holding nearly three-quarters of the seats in Congress, while under Biden they hold a wafer-thin advantage in both chambers.

As a result their best chance in a generation to advance their priorities rests on cramming everything into one bill — a budget bill, which under the Senate rules, can, unlike most legislation, pass on a simple majority vote.

Yet two senators in particular have been pruning the president's plans: Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

The bottom line? A package progressives once hoped might cost $6 trillion US, and Biden had pegged at $3.5 trillion, might contain at most $2 trillion.

That's if it passes at all.

Eager to make progress before a Nov. 2 Virginia governor's race where defeat would demoralize Democrats, Biden is hitting the road to sell the plan.

"The president is certainly feeling an urgency," White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said.

Manchin's demands are better known because he's been consistently making them publicly, in interviews and op-eds. 

He's a rare Democrat elected in the conservative south. West Virginia is a coal-mining state; he's worked to water down the climate provisions in particular.

Sinema's demands aren't as clear.