White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on this week’s broadcast of “The Sunday Show” on MSNBC that it was a positive development that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) signaled he is willing to use the simple majority reconciliation process in the future to pass legislation.
Capehart said, “There you have Senator Joe Manchin laying out his demands for whether or not the Senate should go for reconciliation. You might need to go that route to get infrastructure done, to get the minimum wage raised, the voting rights, HR-1, the For the People Act passed out of the Senate. Your reaction to Senator Manchin?”
Psaki said, “Well, what I heard from him is an openness to not taking tools off the table, and that’s certainly positive. The president’s preference is that we work in a bipartisan way and that we find a path forward with Democrats and Republicans. But what people should have seen through the American Rescue Plan is he’s also not going to be held hostage to months of negotiations when he wants to get relief to the American people.”
“So we’ll see,” she continued. “Infrastructure, as we were talking about, there is a long history of bipartisan support for infrastructure investment. There’s actually also a long history of bipartisan support for immigration and reforming the immigration system. Let’s see what we can do, and let’s see what the path forward can be. But the president is not going to take options off the table. I just heard Senator Manchin isn’t going to take options off the table, and we’ll defer to leaders about the mechanics of moving things forward.”
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