Democrats fear Biden's agenda may be squandered as they pressure key moderates to abandon Senate GOP

Senate Democrats, growing impatient as they watch their ambitious agenda imperiled in the evenly divided chamber, are prepared to go it alone on President Joe Biden's sweeping infrastructure package -- and pressure Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema into backing a Democratic-only approach.

At a closed-door lunch on Tuesday, Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, informed her caucus that she would try to get a bipartisan deal with Republicans on an infrastructure package and that she had Biden's blessing to make that attempt, according to three sources in the room. But after Sinema left the meeting, one Democrat after another teed off on the strategy and expressed deep frustration at what they viewed as a fruitless effort to find consensus with Senate Republicans -- worried that any bipartisan deal would unlikely win the support of many in their caucus, reflecting the growing tension between the progressive and moderate wings of the party.