“He was very frustrated that they couldn’t announce a number today.” The source added that his boss’s “biggest takeaway” was that Biden acknowledged the top-line number would be less than $3.5 trillion. “The president really wanted a top line and was clearly getting frustrated,” said a source briefed on the meeting. “Give me a number, and tell me what you can live with and what you can’t,” Manchin later quoted the president saying. Murphy came to the meeting with a 10-plus-page spreadsheet of ways to fund the bill.īiden fished again for a top line.
They all refused and instead argued Dems should nail down an agreed-upon list of revenue raisers that would determine the top line. It started with the president pressing his 11 guests - including JOE MANCHIN, KYRSTEN SINEMA, STEPHANIE MURPHY and JOSH GOTTHEIMER - to give him a specific top-line number for the reconciliation bill. The second meeting produced the most news. The president was loquacious, according to one senator present: “It’s Biden, so you know Joe does a fair amount of talking.” The last session ended just after 7 p.m. They snacked on individually wrapped cookies with the presidential seal.
In a trio of meetings Biden first hosted Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER and Speaker NANCY PELOSI, then he brought in a bicameral group of centrist Democrats, and finally he gathered key progressives from both chambers. But given how dug in both sides have been, the White House views the commitment from the Manch-ema wing as “a real breakthrough.” THE READOUT - Here’s the most important development that came from President JOE BIDEN’s five hours of meetings with 23 legislators in the Oval Office on Wednesday, according to a senior White House official: “Moderates agreed that they need to coalesce around an offer to the liberals.” | Doug Mills/Pool via Getty Images DRIVING THE DAY President Joe Biden sent moderates on their way with what, from the White House’s perspective, was the most important action item: Come up with a set of principles or framework for reconciliation.
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