President Joe Biden has postponed his flight to meet the Pope so that he can stay in Washington DC several hours longer, and try and convince his own party to back his infrastructure bill.
Biden was due to fly to Rome early on Thursday, ahead of his Friday audience at the Vatican.
The president, a lifelong Catholic, has pushed his flight back by several hours to try and secure a deal. He is still expected to meet Pope Francis on Friday, and hold a meeting with Emmanuel Macron, the French president.
World leaders are gathering in Rome for the G20 meeting on the weekend. Biden will then travel to the UK for the UN climate summit in Glasgow on Monday and Tuesday.
His change in plans came after his flagship infrastructure bill appeared to be veering off course.
Joe Biden, seen on Monday in New Jersey on a visit to shore up support for his Build Back Better plan, on Wednesday night postponed his trip to Europe by several hours, to try and push Democrats to agree a deal. He will now fly out several hours later than scheduled on Thursday
The president on Wednesday night urged Democrats to wrap up talks and bring the social services and climate change bill 'over the finish line'.
Critics within his own party accuse him of rushing the bill in a bid to have a new climate change policy to show off at the UN summit.
The strongest opposition has come from 'The Squad', with the progressive allies accusing Biden of selling out to Joe Manchin, the moderate senator for West Virginia, whose coal country constituents have pushed him to demand a watering down of renewable energy plans.
Another holdout senator, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, has also demanded changes to the climate change provisions.
'I am not going to sell out my district for a bill that was written by the fossil fuel industry and championed by two Dem senators who bow down to Big Pharma & corporate polluters,' tweeted 'Squad' member Rashida Tlaib, a congresswoman for Michigan.
Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is seen on Wednesday, leaving a meeting with Joe Manchin and Joe Biden to thrash out the details of the bill
Ilhan Omar, a congresswoman for Minnesota, on Wednesday night told of her frustration at 'corporate lobbyists, billionaires, and coal company owners hellbent on screwing over the American people.'
She spelt out her complaint in a lengthy Twitter thread, saying: 'Let's have an honest accounting of what is really happening with these ever evolving negotiations.
'First, instead of centering the needs of the American people, corporate Democrats have purely been about lining the pockets and serving the interests of the donor class.
'If you really want to know why a provision is being killed, all you have to do is follow the money…'
Omar blamed lobbyists for pharmaceutical firms and energy companies for sabotaging the original plan.
'It is corporate greed, and the lawmakers who serve them, who are betraying the values of our party and the American people,' she said.
'We did not come to Congress to watch our entire agenda get torpedoed by corporate lobbyists, billionaires, and coal company owners hellbent on screwing over the American people.
'It's time to bring to the floor a bill that prioritizes people over corporations.'
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another Squad member, representing New York, said that she was not prepared to back the bill without seeing the full text.
'Details matter,' she said.
'A lot of people don't know what the 'bipartisan' bill consists of (despite text) and why it's critical that Build Back Better be paired with it.'
Ocasio-Cortez said that Congress needed to pass both Build Back Better (BBB), Biden's all-encompassing infrastructure plan, in addition to BIF - Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, the deal struck between Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate in August.
She said BIF alone was not sufficient.
'Take climate. There is a LOT of oil and gas lobbyist spin about BIF, but deal is it's climate negative. One example: People will say 'oh look at all this money in climate - like hydrogen energy!'
'Well, not all hydrogen is the same. The H sources matter. There are 3 kinds: blue, green, and grey.
'Green hydrogen is the good stuff: that hydrogen comes from water and helps us draw down emissions.
'You know where Blue hydrogen comes from? Fracked gas. Blue hydrogen has worse emissions than coal, locks in more powerful climate destruction than what we're doing now.
'Blue is bad. (Grey too)
'Guess which one bipar bill finances? Blue.'
Ocasio-Cortez explained: 'So for those who like to call folks like me naïve, immature, or that 'I don't know what I'm doing'- some of us actually read the text while others get hustled by spin.
'Details matter. On climate, they're life+death. So to do my job, I need more than an IOU. Not too much to ask.'
Tempers flared late on Wednesday after a billionaires' tax and a paid family leave program fell out of the Democrats' sweeping bill, mostly to satisfy a pivotal senator in the 50-50 Senate.
But expanded health care programs, free pre-kindergarten and some $500 billion to tackle climate change remain in the mix in what's now at least a $1.75 trillion package.
And Democrats are eyeing a new surcharge on the wealthy - 5% on incomes above $10 million and an additional 3% on those beyond $25 million - to help pay for it, a source told AP.
The administration was assessing the situation 'hour by hour,' White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
It was a fast-moving day on Capitol Hill that started upbeat as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that Democrats were in 'pretty good shape.'
But hopes quickly faded as Biden's big proposal ran into stubborn new setbacks, chief among them how to pay for it all.
A just-proposed tax on billionaires could be scrapped after Manchin objected, according to a senior party aide.
The billionaires' tax proposal had been designed to win over another Democratic holdout, Sinema - but Manchin
