How Joe’s big mouth cost Dems in Senate
Spilled Sinema secret on stalled BBB: book
His message was “Build Back Better,” but in two meetings meant to rally congressional Democrats behind his stalled agenda last fall, President Biden added another “b” word: bewildered.
Biden left pols scratching their heads by blurting out confidential details of a conversation with a key senator and then an out-of-leftfield anecdote about baseball great Satchel Paige, a new book reveals.
Biden brought together progressives and moderates in the Oval Office on Sept. 22, 2021, to try to break the impasse over the separate infrastructure and social spending bills, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns write in “This Will Not Pass.”
Swing-vote Democratic Sens. Joe
Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona had expressed skepticism at the price tag of the latter plan, which left-wing progressives in the party had pegged at up to $3.5 trillion.
Martin and Burns write that up to that point, Sinema had been a “uniquely opaque character” in the negotiations, keeping her specific objections to the legislation quiet in accordance with White House requests.
During the September meeting, Biden suggested that the Build Back Better plan could wind up costing about $2 trillion before noting that Sinema was pushing for much less.
“In fact, Biden told the group, the Arizona senator had set her limit at $1.1 trillion,” Martin and Burns write. “The room froze. Now Biden had exposed to some of Sinema’s
colleagues the very position his aides had asked her to conceal.”
“Mr. President,” the “visibly angry” Sinema reportedly said. “That was a private conversation.”
She then stood up and asked: “Do you want me to leave?”
According to the authors, Biden tried to take the edge off the room and did not ask Sinema to leave.
Days later, on Oct. 1, Biden traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with Democrats as the House prepared to vote on the infrastructure plan.
Martin and Burns wrote that Biden told lawmakers they were on the verge of making a transformational change in America. But noting the close margins by which Democrats held the House and Senate, Biden admitted that he had still not been able to convince the two Democratic holdouts in the Senate.
That would require more time, the president reportedly said.
“If Biden had a plan, he did not share it,” the authors write.
What the president did do was “share a story about Satchel Paige, the legendary Black pitcher who played baseball deep into his forties in a career that spanned the integration of Major League Baseball,” according to the book.
The then-78-year-old Biden told an oft-repeated story about Paige being asked how he was still able to play baseball at an advanced age.
“‘How old would you be if you did not know how old you were?’ ” Biden quoted Paige as responding, according to the book.
“It was not clear what message Biden intended to convey with that story,” Martin and Burns write.