Poll: 2 Percent of Democrats Believe Biden’s Reconciliation Debate ‘Has Helped Them’

Just two percent of Democrat staffers who work in Congress believe the discussion about Biden’s radical reconciliation package has “helped them” politically, according to Punchbowl News on Wednesday.

As Democrats believe the debate about Biden’s far-left agenda has not helped the party, 52 percent of staffers said the negotiations “harmed” Democrats. Forty percent said Biden’s agenda neither helped nor harmed Democrats.

Punchbowl News said of the poll’s results that “one would think that jousting over the [Democrat] party’s top priorities should be at least a bit more helpful than this” to the Democrats. “Of course it [negotiations] was messy, but that’s a bottom-of-the-barrel low number” for Democrats.

On the Republican side, meanwhile, 91 percent of GOP staffers told Punchbowl News Biden’s agenda “helped them” while eight percent said Biden’s agenda neither helped nor hurt the Republican Party.

The polling comes as Democrats are still infighting over Biden’s agenda. The newest fight is over whether a House vote should occur without legislative scoring from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which rates the costs taxpayers will incur.

Wednesday afternoon the CBO delivered scores on three aspects of the bill, though the total package has yet to be scored. “Other estimates will take longer, particularly for provisions in some titles that interact with those in other titles. When we determine a release date for the cost estimate for the entire bill, we will provide advance notice,” the CBO said.

Less radical House Democrats last week opposed a vote on the massive tax and spend legislation until the score is fully produced by the CBO.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) told reporters Tuesday they intend to vote on the framework next week.“To clarify for everyone: the agreement we made w/our colleagues was NOT for CBO score,” Jayapal argued Tuesday. “It was for some additional financial information from CBO.”

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania study estimated the net cost of the package would amount to $2.40 trillion. The White House has claimed it would cost “zero” dollars.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø