President Joe Biden shifted his strategy to sell his ambitious social spending plans by traveling outside Washington on Tuesday and pitching his agenda as a way to invest in American greatness as in years past, but this time with an eye on improvements for the long haul in order to compete with a changing world.

With his agenda in jeopardy on Capitol Hill, Biden visited the Michigan district of a moderate Democratic lawmaker who has urged him to promote his proposals more aggressively to the public. 

The president did so in a speech that stretched beyond a half hour, in which he outlined nearly every single one of his policy priorities as he aimed to reach the ears of the American people: fixing roads and bridges, replacing lead pipes, expanding the child tax credit, addressing climate change, providing free education, focusing on electric vehicles — and doing it all without raising taxes on lower and middle class Americans.

President Biden painted the United States as a nation that once led the world in its investments and technology but has since fallen behind: “Something happened. We slowed up. We stopped investing in ourselves."

“America’s still the largest economy in the world, we still have the most productive workers and the most innovative minds in the world," Biden said. "We're at risk of losing our edge as a nation.”

The president pitched his two-part plan as a turning point and a “blue collar blueprint to restore America’s pride.”

“It's essential that we regain our momentum that we've lost,” he said. “The work of our time … is to prepare ourselves to be more competitive and to win the fast-changing 21st century in a global economy. Things are changing incredibly quickly.”

The week before, President Biden had cancelled a planned trip to Chicago to remain in Washington, D.C. and continue conversations with Democratic lawmakers as they sought agreement on the components of his agenda. He’s rescheduled that trip for Thursday, and more travel is expected in coming days.

Back in D.C., negotiations continued on a pair of bills to boost spending on safety net, health and environmental programs and infrastructure projects.

While there is cautious optimism about recent progress, no deal had been struck to bridge stark divides between moderates and progressives in the Democratic Party on the size and scope of the package. In recent weeks, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi worked unsuccessfully to secure passage of the bills, Biden stayed in Washington to cajole lawmakers and work phones.

Now, he's trying to put the public focus on popular components of the bills rather than the inside-the-Beltway debate over their price tag.

While progressives and moderates grapple over the contours and the topline number for the $3.5 trillion social spending package, Biden has sought to reframe the debate around the eye-popping number. He contends that because the spending is to be paid for with tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy — those earning beyond $400,000 a year, or $450,000 for couples — the price tag of the bill is actually “zero.”

The president appeared alongside Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin when he visited a union training center in Howell, Michigan, a reflection of the importance of securing moderates’ votes. Trump narrowly carried Slotkin's district in the 2020 election.

Biden, Slotkin said, understands “that if we’re going to make these investments we have to be able to pay for them.”

“We talked a lot about the fact that we are not going to take this bill and pass on more debt to our kids, and we are not going to pay for this bill on the back of working families,” she said.

Next to Biden, the Democrats with the most on the line over the shape and success of his spending plans are House members from swing districts whose reelections are essential if his party is to retain control of Congress.

Democratic legislators have warned that Biden’s bold ideas are getting lost in the party's infighting and procedural skirmishes over the legislation.

“We must communicate to the country the transformative nature of the initiatives in the legislation,” Pelosi said in a letter to lawmakers ahead of Biden’s trip.

In his speech Tuesday, President Biden highlighted his plan’s specific benefits for union workers.

“Someone pointed out to me that I allegedly have used the word ‘union’ as president more than the last seven presidents combined,” he noted at the top to applause. “Not a joke. You built the country.”

“The only thing we've been missing is the will from Washington to finally build an economy around you,” he later added. “We can't get here thinking small. We have to think big.”

President Biden also took time to explain his tax proposals meant to pay for his agenda, including by raising the top individual income tax bracket to 39.6%.

“As I said, I'm a capitalist. I think you should be able to make a lot of money in America, but just pay your fair share,” he said.

And he painted the current moment as critical to the United States’ ability to compete with its adversaries.

“The world's watching,” he warned. “The autocrats of the world believe the world is moving so rapidly that democracies can't generate consensus quickly enough to bring the people together to get things done.”

“I know we can do this. I’m confident we can,” he said. “We’re going to restore faith, pride and dignity in the future of this country. And we’re going to pass both of these bills.” 

The visit to Slotkin's district, one of just seven districts that went for Trump while being held by a Democrat, is part of the sales effort.

Slotkin supports a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill that has passed the Senate but prefers passing it in the House before negotiating the broader $3.5 trillion package of social programs. She has indicated that she may vote to approve the broader bill sooner if it is fiscally responsible and can make a difference for families, her aides said, but she is not a guaranteed yes — which she planned to tell Biden on Tuesday.

“To be honest, it was hard for me to understand why leadership decided in the first place to tie the two bills together,” Slotkin recently told The Detroit News. “That’s not how we normally operate. It’s not my preference.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that after Biden spent considerable time in recent days deep in the messy negotiations over the bills, "now it’s also important to remind people, as the sausage-making has been kind of the dominant storyline for the last few weeks, what this is all about. Why he’s fighting so hard for it.”

The uptick in the president’s travel is meant to build public support for a wide range of initiatives packaged under the imprecise slogan of “Build Back Better.” A series of crises, from Afghanistan to COVID-19, along with the convoluted legislative process have hampered the White House’s ability to promote the massive package or even say definitively what will be in the final version.

Polling suggests that elements in the bill such as expanded child care opportunities and infrastructure projects are popular with large parts of the public. But even some of the White House’s closest allies have worried that the West Wing has not done enough to sell it.

Washington was gripped with the drama last week as lawmakers grappled with the massive Democrats-only social spending bill that has been linked with the infrastructure bill. Progressives have balked at paring down the size of $3.5 trillion social package and have refused to vote for the infrastructure bill if the other bill shrinks. Moderate Democrats, meanwhile, are pushing for the bipartisan infrastructure bill to get a House vote first and some are wary about the size of the far larger social spending bill.

That leaves Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress at a crossroads, trying to move past the tangle of legislating and remind voters what they are trying to accomplish. The president held a virtual meeting with 12 progressive House members on Monday and plans a similar session with moderates later in the week.

Biden told reporters on Tuesday that the bill will be less than $3.5 trillion, but did not specify what he will cut out of the existing legislation to get down to a lower figure.

With considerable attention focused on winning over two key Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, rank-and-file lawmakers could benefit from the high-profile backup that comes from Biden making the case for his vision to the public.

Manchin, for his part, did not rule out a package in the range of $1.9-$2.1 trillion, though he has previously pushed for a figure of $1.5 trillion.

"Well I'm not ruling anything out, but the bottom line is I want to be strategic, to do the right job, and we don't basically add more to the concerns we have right now," Manchin told CNN on Turesday. "Basically I'm more concerned about our nation and our country turning into a more of a entitlement society, versus a rewarding society. So there's a balance to be had here."

House members are fanning out to their home districts this week as public views of Biden’s agenda are being shaped. Senators remain in Washington but are working on another tangle, the legislation needed to raise the nation’s debt limit by midmonth to avert a devastating credit default.

Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and White House officials huddled late Monday in a room off the Senate floor to discuss the next steps for passing Biden’s agenda.

Those behind-the-scenes talks are intense as Biden lowers the size and scope of the $3.5 trillion social spending package to win over Manchin, Sinema and a small band of conservative Democrats in the House without alienating progressives, who are fighting to keep their priorities in the bill.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.