Still, Democratic officials say many lawmakers have been getting an earful from constituents back home about the level of federal spending, leading some of the most vulnerable Democrats to push the leadership to cut back the tax-and-social-spending measure or find ways to pay for more of it.
"So we don't want to push the leadership to the point where they have no room left to act.
This week's issue of The Economist reports that Rafael Correa, the president, is using the case to push for leadership of the far left in Latin America.
The first time Sandberg used the phrase "lean in", her shorthand for urging women to push for leadership roles in the workplace, was during a lecture at the US Naval Academy in 2011.
And he predicted that joining the world trade body would "push the leadership to relax its restrictions on subject matter" so that Chinese films could compete with the influx from Hollywood.
Left to its own inertia, and beholden to the oil companies for campaign contributions, the Senate will never coalesce behind a bill with firm carbon limits, without the strong push of leadership that President Obama should be providing in the wake of this unspeakable tragedy.
Earlier in the day, members of the party's conservative bloc used a closed-door party meeting to push the leadership to go well beyond its plans to trim about $40 billion from domestic spending and foreign aid this year, demanding $100 billion or more.
Civil-liberties advocates had hoped their unlikely allies within the Tea Party movement would be able to push GOP leadership toward reform or sunset for the Patriot Act.
A shift among Republican senators is clearly underway, but there does not yet appear to be enough momentum to push GOP leadership to back off the blockade and allow a vote before a new president is elected.
