Yamiche Alcindor:
Well, this bipartisan infrastructure bill, this huge bill, is like President Biden catching his white whale.
He had said over and over again on the campaign trail that he was going to be for bipartisanship, that he was going to be working across the aisle. And now you have this mood here at the White House today of real jubilance, of feeling like here is President Biden proving people wrong.
And that’s why we saw the president do a couple rare things today. Just a few feet away from me is the White House driveway. We never see the president come up to the microphones that are usually stationed there.
But, this time, the president swaggered up with Republicans and Democratic senators and announced that there was a deal. You could see the happiness in his face. And then, of course, he held that impromptu press conference, explaining how they got to this deal, explaining all of the different things that were in it.
Now, I have been talking to White House sources, and they underscore that this bill, they think, is transformational. And to put it into even more context here, in 1956, under President Eisenhower, the Interstate Highway System was constructed. And, in today’s dollars, that would be over $500 billion.
This bill tops that. So that is what the White House is wanting to underscore here today. And when it comes to the president’s role, he was very, very engaged.
The president, before he left for Europe for NATO and the G7, he underscored that he wanted to get a deal done. When I came back, I talked to White House officials immediately, and they said that their prospect was better than when the president left.
And that tells you that the White House was on Capitol Hill doing this work, ironing out these numbers in the details.
