Hi, this is Julia, calling from Puerto Rico. I'm sitting on a balcony listening to the tiny frogs make their nightly calls. This podcast was recorded at.

It is 2.09 Eastern on Monday, July 19th.

Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll still be sitting on the balcony listening to the frogs.

Sue and Mara, DC cicadas or Puerto Rican frogs, which sounds better.

Puerto Rican frogs. The frogs.

I think so, yeah, I like those. That was soothing.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Scott Detro, I cover the White House.

I'm Susan Davis, I cover Congress.

And I'm Mara Lias and National Political Correspondent.

Okay, so this week we expect to see some of the first concrete actions taken in the Senate on President Biden's big infrastructure.

Plan. This is a central policy push of his first term. It's something we've talked about a lot on this podcast.

Sue, can you explain what is happening this week and also explain why given how long ago he came out of the White House and said we have a deal like like what's taken so long?

What is going on here?

Well, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is pushing for some confrontation this week both with Republicans and with the Democrats in his own party.

He set up a pretty ambitious timeline to get moving on both the infrastructure package and Biden's essentially as American Families Plan, his big economic plan, before they adjourned for the August recess.

Not to complete them, but to at least get the ball moving.

And so the first thing he's going to do is try to force a procedural vote on Wednesday to get the Senate to agree to take up the bipartisan infrastructure plan.

The trick here, Scott, is they don't actually have a bill yet. So Schumer is trying to get the Senate to agree to start debate on the bill and they basically finish writing it on the floor.

Not everyone's really happy about this tactic. You know, senators are a grumpy sort and they're especially Republicans who don't like to feel the pressure of the majority to try to get them on the bill.

But that's one big vote we're going to see this week. And internally, Schumer has also set a deadline for the same day Wednesday to have all 50 Democrats on board for the $3.5 trillion reconciliation plan.

That's not going to require a vote out in public. It's more of the inside the room. Everybody on board here, agreement that they can move forward on that.

Mara, there are a lot of high wire acts going on at once here. It sounds like. Yes, a lot of high wire acts going on at once. And it's because President Biden has an incredibly ambitious agenda and an incredibly tiny majority in the Senate.

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