night. kelly and ali. kelly, let s start with you. we heard a lot. that s the tip of the iceberg for what president biden addressed at the town hall. what are the major signals he s sending right now about his agenda and the white house s priorities themselves? in some ways it was the tone of the president. humor, optimism coming through. some reality about the limitations of what his own influence and power can do to shape this when you have just 50 democrats who are in the senate. so that reality is there. we expect that there will be difficulty with the issue that he had said would be a part of the plan, and that is raising taxes on corporations and wealthier americans. he made clear that the arizona senator kyrsten sinema is opposed to raising the rates on corporations and high earning individuals. that presents a challenge to the
financing of the package. the issue of community college being free. the president saying that he could try to get that done at a later time. but that would be a piece that is a big chunk of what he promised. hanging on instead to on the front end of one s education, the universal pre-k remaining in the bill. the president pointed out it s not all baked in yet. the president has an important personal deadline coming, and that s his trip overseas which is come where that will include not being on the global stage but the climate conference that he s heading to. will they make it in time? there are some who don t believe that is likely. others who think they can maybe use the pressure of that calendar and the reputation of the united states as the president would describe it, for a bit of leverage to try to get things done. it seems hard to imagine that s going to happen yet, but we ll see. we know that this morning the house speaker was here at the white house having breakfast
that won t get you all the way to what free community college would have done, but it will help, and thinking about things like medicare expansion. this was really important to bernie sanders. adding dental, vision and hearing to medicare. instead, what we heard from president biden last night is that maybe there s going to be something like an 8 $00 voucher for dental coverage proposed instead of touching medicare. we re starting to see alternatives play out here as well. as someone who spends their time running back and forth between the halls on capitol hill, the number of times that we have heard the name joe manching and kyrsten sinema at the town hall with the president of the united states, he jokes about the fact that in a senate that s this tight, everyone can be a president, but it just goes to show we re going to keep running back and forth. clearly those senators are lynch pins as we wait to see if a deal can be struck. all right. ali on the hill, kelly at the white house
with the president. leader schumer joined via zoom. now that we can all zoom in, dial in face time in from other places, so they could have an update on where things stand. so there are some key developments, and i think one of the most interesting things about the town hall is that when we ve been talking to white house advisers about this, no one wanting to negotiate in public. okay. sure, we understand that. but the president did give us more detail than we had really had before. and from a more comprehensive point of view. and that was helpful to know where things stand today. all right. let s talk about where things stand with lawmakers, kelly o. ali you ve been chasing down lawmakers for any nugget on spending bill negotiations. president biden just spilled a good amount of beans himself. what is the state of play on the hill right now? yeah. we get our steps in here on capitol hill, craig. and we re probably still going to be doing that.
are governments in latin america going to speak up about repression in november? well, they vntd done much after the 11th of july when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets asking for only one thing, freedom. thank you for being with me this morning. thank you for the privilege of your time. craig melvin picks up with more news right now. good wednesday morning to you. craig melvin here from world head quarters in new york city. right now the fate of two major democratic priorities hang in the balance. democrats seem to be making some big progress with president bide en s build back better agenda. the quote, closer and chief joined moderates and progressives closer, but how far are they still from a deal?