President Biden’s assertion that he wants dual cooperation on important legislation is not just an issue, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday, insisting he was willing to work with Republicans on his massive spending bill.
GOP lawmakers have criticized Biden’s American Jobs plan for its $ 2 trillion price tag and its wide range, but Psaki said at a news conference that neither of the two had been stoned. Asked if Biden was willing to discuss the cost and content of the bill instead of just the way it should be paid, Psaki replied in the affirmative.
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“He is absolute, he is looking forward to hearing their ideas and his goal is to find a way forward where we can modernize our country’s infrastructure so that we can compete with China,” Psaki said.
The question came when Republicans expressed doubts about whether Biden really cared about working with Republicans, and Biden’s government repositioned what he meant by ‘two-party’ to refer more to the public and government officials, as opposed to lawmakers in the Congress.
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“If you looked up ‘dual’ in the dictionary, I would think it would be Republican and Democratic support,” Anita Dunn, Biden’s senior adviser, told The Washington Post. Congress should not be. ‘
Despite these messages, Psaki insisted that the president was really interested in getting across the aisle.
‘You do not use the time of the President of the United States, each time including two infrastructure meetings … or the meeting today, if he did not want to hear authentically from the members who attended about their ideas, about how to move this package is twofold, ‘she said.
However, Biden’s $ 1.9 billion coronavirus relief package was passed without a single Republican vote, and even the moderate Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine – a longtime friend of Biden’s – expressed doubts about the government.
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Collins, the only Republican senator who voted in favor of each of the president’s cabinet votes, told The Wall Street Journal in March that while the president himself wants unity, those in his job may not.
“I was a little worried that maybe some of these leftist groups, or maybe staff members, were constantly inciting him to try to move him further to the left than I think is wise.”