vaccine mandates and whatnot. on the president s domestic agenda, big s.w.a.t.s of the american public, there is no regional or gender divide. big numbers support the human infrastructure bill and the hard infrastructure bill, the pieces in it. i wonder if the white house reframing the tactic, reframing the schedule making it clear to the public that this deadline was self imposed, is that imperative of him. there is good natured grumbling in the building behind me, congress only acts if they have a deadline. so they were supportive of them having a deadline. that s the only way the government would do anything. it is a soft deadline, self imposed. those who we talked with suggest they want to back off that. speaker pelosi said there might be a vote today. she said that yesterday, too.
meeting because they are senators and this is a meeting with house democrats. but they are key to passing this bill. senior capitol hill correspondent garrett haake is right outside the room where the meeting is happening. tell me what you heard as folks were on their way in. look, this is the second meeting of the day for these democrats after a leaky first meeting. they have all checked their cell phones at the door here. i think what the expectation here is is that biden is going to calm some nerves here. house democrats and democrats more broadly in the capitol have been at each other the last week and going back the last couple of weeks about this deadline, about the fate of these packages. and biden has been pretty consistent in his public statements and according to reporting of white house colleagues behind the scenes saying this is going the take time, this is the time when we have to stay together. i think he is delivering the same message now and unless he
breath and realizes let s not have self-inflicted wounds over self imposed deadlines. wise words. i want to bring donna edwards back into the conversation. does that sound reasonable to you? i am a creature of the house. what i can tell you is any time a president comes to the democratic caucus i know that i experienced that with president obama it is a big deal. it gives a chance for members to ask questions and to present their case to the president of the united states. it allows him to listen and then do engage even one-on-one with members. and, you know, this is not this meeting today is not about, you know, switching votes or changing votes. it s about reminding democrats of who they are as democrats and how they have shared values. and i think as claire has indicated, there is broad agreement around the policies. and so now you have got the policies and the priorities, and it is time to line the numbers
either direction. instead, reminding those are the words that representative corey bush told me directly. i wrote this bill, this is the build back better agenda, remembering all of these democrats by and large they all agree with the basic tenettes and the policy in this, but reminding them once again that this is the democratic president s agenda for the country right now. the vibe that i have gotten from members who have been coming out has been mostly positive. progressives and moderates alike saying it was good to hear from the president today. at the same time, though, they are throwing cold water on the idea there is going to be a vote tonight. we have heard varying things from democratic leadership on whether or not the vote was actually going to happen. certainly, after this caucus meeting the sense that i get from talking to members is that we are not likely to see a vote happen tonight and that there is more work to be done. that s work that the president himself seemed to
today is about trying to bridge divides, the president being there not the whip the votes but reminding everybody of the broad vision and we are going to get it done, even if it doesn t happen today or tomorrow. the white house also told me earlier this week that too much was made about the overall price tag, that it was hard to communicate what was in the bill. that people lost sight of all the good things that were in it in their estimation. that when the people are polled independently about programs they are popular. when they are fwreeted with a 3.5 trillion dollars bill they are like, whoa, that seems expensive. they want to do a better job of selling it to people rather than how much it costs. they expect that number to come down. something the president hasn t been able to do in recent weeks is travel the country and barn storm for this particular bill. he has been consumed with covid,