Is there anyone Joe Biden and his team didn’t infuriate during the quixotic quest to pass Build Back Better? Business Insider reports:
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona almost walked out on President Joe Biden in the Oval Office during a tense exchange over the scope of his economic agenda, according to a forthcoming book from a pair of New York Times reporters.
. . .
During a meeting with Democratic moderates, Biden revealed that Sinema had set her Build Back Better spending limit at $1.1 trillion — roughly one-third less than Sen. Joe Manchin’s $1.5 trillion price tag.
Sinema appeared “visibly angry” at Biden for revealing details from their personal talks, Burns and Martin write. Biden aides had “feared that if Sinema drew a public red line at $1.1 trillion—a miserly sum by liberal standards—then the party would erupt in open war.”
The authors wrote: “‘Mr. President,” she said, ‘that was a private conversation.’ Sinema began to stand up. She asked Biden: ‘Do you want me to leave?'”
Biden’s staff also angered Joe Manchin:
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Monday blamed White House staff for the breakdown in negotiations over President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and doubled down on his commitment to tanking the bill.
“This is not the president, this is staff,” Manchin told West Virginia radio host Hoppy Kercheval in a 14-minute MetroNews radio interview Monday morning.
“I just got to the wit’s end,” he said, adding that White House staff “drove some things and they put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable. They know what it is.”
Lovely stuff.