On 12/20/2021, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki says Biden will ‘work like hell’ to pass $2T bill despite Manchin ‘no’. on Monday acted as if Sen. Joe Manchin’s firm “no” on President Biden’s massive social spending bill actually was a “maybe. “Clearly the next couple weeks will be important and pivotal and certainly involve high-level staff engagements, involve the president, and his engagements directly with members. And we have been engaged with leadership, with members of the Senate and their staff, over the course of the last 24 hours to talk about the path forward.” Psaki said at her daily press briefing.
CNN reporter Phil Mattingly asked Psaki about the “palpable anger” in her White House statement that slammed Manchin after the centrist’s comments on Fox News, blocking the bill. “Sen. Manchin had a strong statement yesterday and we had a strong statement as well. And we’re ready to move forward and get this done and work like hell to do that — with Sen. Manchin, with members of the Democratic caucus across the Democratic Party, and that’s our focus moving forward. But that was the basis of our calculus yesterday,” Psaki said. But when pressed on what the path forward would be, Psaki said only, “I think you will hear from [Biden] on how we’re gonna get the agenda done.”
CBS News reporter Ed O’Keefe also asked Psaki for Biden’s “message to progressives” who lost leverage in the House by voting for a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, allowing it to pass and become law. Psaki said that “his message would be that we need to work together to get this done and he’s going to work like hell to get it done. And that would be his message and January is an opportunity to do exactly that.”
Manchin had said that he was concerned about the effects of the bill on inflation. “Today inflation is the biggest threat, I think, we have right now… We sent out $5.4 trillion to try to help people. We are making more of a crisis on the individual person today because of high costs and inflation,” Manchin said.
The senator also slammed Biden’s White House negotiators — though none by name — for not listening to his policy demands when his vote was needed. “It is not the president. This is staff,” Manchin told home-state radio host Hoppy Kercheval. “And they drove some things, and they put some things out, that were absolutely inexcusable. They know what it is.” When The Post asked Psaki if any of Biden’s aides would be reassigned in response to Manchin’s complaints, Psaki said “no and Sen. Manchin hasn’t even outlined more detail.”
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