Yamiche Alcindor:
Well, this is really President Biden saying it is time for Democrats to get together. It is time for Democrats to make a deal and vote.
This is really a political calculation the part of the president and in some ways a political risk. The White House put this framework out without actually securing whether or not senators, especially Senators Manchin and Sinema, as well as House progressives, were actually going to back this framework and vote for it.
There was a sense, and White House officials were telling me all morning that they believed the president, as well as this framework, would earn the vote of the House and the Senate. But it really was a calculation the part of the president to say, I’m going to put out the ideas after talking to people for weeks, and I think that this is what the caucus can get behind.
The other thing to note is that the president, when he went to Capitol Hill today, he went with a clear message. And that message was, it’s not hyperbole to think that our majorities, Democrats’ majorities in the House and the Senate, as well as his own presidency, the future of it, will be determined what by what happens in the next week.
That is really, really extraordinary language by President Biden, because he’s saying, essentially, that his legacy and his ability to be able to be reelected and the ability for Democrats all over the country to be elected really is riding on this idea of whether or not they can get these infrastructure bills through Congress.
So that is really, in some ways, the White House thinking here. The president is confident because he says, at the end of the day, he’s the leader of the party. And after having all these discussions, he hopes that people in the party will be able to trust him and be able to vote for these bills.