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WASHINGTON – President Biden said on Monday that activists who have clashed with Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona, in recent days have gone too far, although he has described such confrontations as a common facet of life. in politics.
“I don’t think these are appropriate tactics, but it happens to everyone,” Biden said in a question-and-answer session with reporters following a speech he gave on the debt ceiling.
Manchin and Sinema are both centrist Democrats whose resistance to the president’s $ 3.5 trillion national investment proposal, known as Build Back Better, has undermined this and another Bill of Rights. $ 1.2 trillion infrastructure that enjoys significant Republican support.
In response to the stalemate, progressive activists increased their pressure on holdouts. Last week, several protesters affiliated with the Center for Popular Democracy and other groups took to the Potomac River dock in Washington, DC, where Manchin keeps his barge, named Almost Heaven, an inspired state motto. from a song by John Denver. Manchin appeared on the bridge to hear their concerns.
“We need you to be with us,” protesters said during the exchange, which they filmed.
Immigration activists affiliated with Living United for Change in Arizona confronted Sinema on Sunday in an Arizona State University building, ultimately following her into the bathroom.
While the $ 1.2 trillion bill includes funds to repair bridges and roads and to boost access to high-speed internet service, the $ 3.5 trillion package is more lofty, ambitious and loaded. It includes funds for childcare, provisions to lower the prices of prescription drugs, and measures to get the country to adopt electric vehicles and use only clean energy sources.
Manchin said $ 3.5 trillion – to be spent over 10 years – is an amount he is not prepared to accept. Sinema’s objections have been harder to analyze, but appear to revolve around an aversion to raising taxes for the rich and corporate to pay for expenses, as the Democrats have proposed. Democrats only hold a one-vote majority in the Senate, so either senator could defeat the legislation.
Sinema returned to Arizona on Friday for what she said was a medical appointment, though he quickly emerged that she would also participate in a fundraiser. His absence from Washington angered Democrats who were frustrated with the enigmatic Arizonan.
Some have described the confrontation in the bathroom as harassment that would ultimately prove to be unproductive for the progressive cause. Sinema seemed unhappy with the meeting. “Yesterday’s behavior was not a legitimate protest,” she said in a press release published Monday morning.
Biden’s half-century in public life has accustomed him to such tactics. “The only people that doesn’t happen to are the people who have the Secret Service around them. So that’s part of the process, ”he said on Monday. Neither Sinema nor Manchin appeared to be in physical danger when they met protesters and activists.
And the president did not hesitate to blame the two senators on Monday for threatening his party’s agenda. “I need 50 votes in the Senate. I’m 48, “he said.
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