President Joe Biden is joking about how he plans on reaching a compromise with congressional leaders on infrastructure spending.
During a meeting in the Oval Office with Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Biden told reporters he expects they will discuss how they can reach an agreement.
“We’re going to talk a lot about infrastructure today to see if there’s any way we can reach a compromise that gets the people’s work done and is within the bounds of everyone agreeing,” Biden said on Wednesday.
When asked how he expects to accomplish the goal, Biden responded jokingly, “Easy, just snap my fingers, it will happen.”
Watch Biden’s remarks below:
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris meet with top congressional leaders at the White House in a crucial week for Biden's infrastructure plan https://t.co/5cF8ScDnZz pic.twitter.com/T96FqJWKjM
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 12, 2021
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked during a briefing how Biden can work with McCarthy following Wednesday’s vote to oust Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from leadership.
She responded, “The president is no stranger to working with people who he disagrees with or he has massive fundamental disagreements with.”
Psaki continued, “What the president believes his role is is to lead by example and to offer an alternative of leadership to the American people which is reaching his hand across the aisle, offering to work with members of both parties on addressing issues the American people have concerns about.”
Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan addresses transportation, water infrastructure and access to broadband internet services.
McConnell indicated Republicans would accept a package between $600 billion and $800 billion.
Schumer said Democrats “prefer to do things in a bipartisan way, and we’re going to keep pursuing that in a variety of different ways.”
He continued, “But obviously we don’t want to make the mistake of 2009 and ’10 where the negotiations went on forever and then the Republicans didn’t join and we didn’t get much else done.”