Biden admin unveils revamped $1.75T spending framework

The Biden administration has unveiled a revamped $1.75T spending framework. Yahoo Finance's Jessica Smith shares the details.

Video transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: We are expecting the president to speak this hour after the White House released the framework of that Build Back Better Act, but there's still a lot of questions about whether, in fact, the president has the votes in place to get this across the finish line.

Let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Jessica Smith who's tracking the developments for us. Jess, where do things stand right now?

JESSICA SMITH: Yeah, Akiko, well, President Biden met with the Democratic Party earlier today at the Capitol urging them to support the Build Back Better plan and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. The House-- excuse me, the White House did release an outline of a revamped version of the Build Back Better plan, that reconciliation package that Democrats are trying to pass. It has climate measures, social spending in it.

It comes in at $1.75 trillion. That is down from $3.5 trillion that they had originally wanted. What made the cut is universal pre-K, child care, an extension of the child tax credit by a year, the earned income tax credit as well, more than $500 billion toward climate change, and Medicare now would have hearing coverage in it as well. There's also workforce training, housing, affordability measures, and then other education programs, potentially up to $100 billion for immigration reform.

And how they're planning on paying for this is with a 15% minimum corporate tax rate for large corporations, a 1% tax on corporate stock buybacks, a 15% global minimum tax, increased IRS enforcement, and then a 5% tax on income over $10 million, and then an extra 3% tax on income over $25 million.

Now, what is missing from this plan is paid leave, the climate program that President Biden was pushing originally, free community college, prescription-drug pricing, and several other key priorities that Democrats have been pushing. But after months of negotiations with moderate senators like Senator Sinema and Senator Manchin, this is what the White House has come up with.

At this point, the White House is not saying which lawmakers have signed off on this deal. We heard from the number two Democrat in the Senate earlier today saying he is not confident that all 50 senators will be on board with this. He says there's a lot of uncertainty. House lawmakers that did meet with President Biden seemed relatively optimistic coming out of that meeting, but it's still not clear if this is going to be enough. So we'll see as the administration and as leadership continue to try and build support throughout the day. Guys.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, now we're hearing out of Washington that the White House says the president's remarks will now occur at 11:15 AM Eastern Time. So not sure if that means anything for the confidence here, but we'll hear more quickly than, I guess, we were expecting to.

And, Jess, when we talk about what this means for the infrastructure bill too, I mean, you talked about those hesitant Democrats there in the Senate, but what is maybe what we learned in this spending piece of it-- or the tax piece of it, I should say, but what does that maybe do to the overall picture of getting it done?

JESSICA SMITH: We're going to see maybe today. Speaker Pelosi has reportedly said that she wants a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill today. We'll see if that actually happen. The big question is what progressives in the House are going to do. Many of them have said that they want to vote on the reconciliation package first. They at least want to see text of the reconciliation package first, and right now we only have this outline, and it's not clear if that's going to be enough to get support.

So we will see if progressives can get on board with this bipartisan infrastructure bill, if this framework is enough for them. But that vote could come as soon as today. We'll see if it actually happens.

AKIKO FUJITA: OK, Jessica Smith staying on top of these developments. Feels like it's changing by the minute here. And we should remind our viewers that President Biden is expected to speak this hour. We're now being told at 11:15, so about 10 minutes from now. We're going to bring you those live comments as soon as that begins.