kind of drama in december. in the meantime will you be able to put the infrastructure package together in a reconciliation package that could also include a debt ceiling extension or expansion so that you wouldn t have to go through this again? well, we ll have to have that discussion in terms of whether that s the appropriate way to go or whether we can deal with it in conjunction with the effort to make sure we enact the full spending bill to keep the government open on december 3rd and moving forward. in the interim we ve got to get the infrastructure agreement over the finish line, fix our crumbling roads, bridges and create millions of good paying jobs and at the same time make the investments in child care and home care and health care, expanding access to medicaid, making sure we deal with the climate crisis and green our economy with the fierce urgency of now.
it looks like we re on track for a similar kind of drama in december. in the meantime, will you be able to put the infrastructure package together, in a reconciliation package, they could also include a debt ceiling extension or expansion. so you wouldn t have to go through this again? well, we will have to have that discussion in terms of whether that s the appropriate way to go. or whether we can deal with it, in conjunction, of making the full spending bill to keep the government open on december 3rd, and moving forward. in the interim, we ve got to get the infrastructure agreement over the finish line, fix our crumbling bridges, roads, tunnels, or mad travelers since them, at the same time make the type of investments in childcare and home care, and health care. expanding access to medicaid. making sure we deal with a crime crisis, and green are climate economy. that s what s in front of us
going forward. i m talking about joe manchin and the frustration he and other senators had after chuck schumer seemed to spike the ball maybe a little bit before getting into the end zone last night on the debt ceiling extension. listen to this. i can t complain. politics. none of us can on both sides. both sides are guilty of this. the frustration was built up. i m sure chuck s frustration was built up, but that was not a way to take it out. i m saying the civility is gone. i m not going to be part of getting rid of it. i m going to try to bring it back. i speak out when i see someone do something i don t like. politics ain t bean bag, but if people the democrats need to get things done like joe manchin who is needed for basically everything are upset for schumer, how more challenging does that make things in the senate? do the senators desperately need the recess week to get away from
changed? well, it may be that they wanted to create some room to work on the rest of their agenda rather than contend with this. you know, there was talk earlier in the week and the president fueled it of a carveout from the filibuster to allow democrats to pass the debt ceiling extension, and that, dyou heard a lot of republicans accusing mccarmcconnell of getting weak knees about that because he s so protective of the filibuster. i don t know if the white house was making an idle threat or not, but clearly they want to get on with the rest of their economic agenda, which is so vital to his success. he has to get these bills passed. he wants to clear the clutter out of the way, and perhaps that s why they accepted this now. that explains why he met with joe manchin, the democratic senator from west virginia to try to come up with some sort of deal on infrastructure and the much larger reconciliation package. all right, guys, thank you very
concerned about the idea of the filibuster blowing up because he was dug in. he said he wasn t going to help democrats at all. today, now, at this hour, there s this shift. no doubt about it. make no mistake, this is not mitch mcconnell fully caving. in fact, i think it s also an attempt to take a little bit out of the wind of the sails of one of the key arguments that president biden has been making about why he doesn t want the senate democrats to do this through reconciliation. i asked the president about that yesterday, and one of the things he kept coming back to is the fact that the reconciliation process is fraught with uncertainty. he said it s an incredibly complicated and cumbersome process, time consuming, this idea of potentially unlimited votes on unrelated amendments that would happen during one of those budget sessions. mitch mcconnell in saying, look, we ll do a short-term debt ceiling extension until december, to give you the time to go through the potentially cumber