it. amid a flurry of meetings at the capitol hill and white house, negotiators on capitol hill still don t even have a firm grasp on what the size of this big reconciliation package will be. manchin and sinema still haven t said what price tag they re willing to support. speculation is about $2.5 trillion. is that where they are? and it bears repeating that the president has not said publicly how big he wants it to be either. we re not the only ones wondering where the president is. here s democratic congresswoman debbie dingle. they re trying to figure out the right thing to do. they need to know exactly where the president stands and what the president wants to do and they re getting mixed signals depending who you talk to and what is it he wants to do and his priorities. people are told you re in or have to be with the president. what is it the president wants? nobody can even answer that question.
congresswoman, let me start with what we heard from debbie dingell this morning. how many members of congress have that same feeling but haven t expressed it so starkly as her. which is, mr. president, tell us what you want. we ve got your back, we just have to know what we got. i think, actually, an important role that all members of congress can play which is also to say what they want. the president in our meeting last week was very clear. he said tell me what you want and tell me what your priorities are. i think as a new democrat coalition we ve been clear on our priorities of expanding the child tax cret and keeping the aca premiums and address medicaid coverage gap and have strong legislation on climate. i think it s important for everyone in the house and the senate to be clear what their top priorities are. because the talk has been about a number but really underneath that number are policies that impact the american people. we want to make sure there are
secretary austin, very uncommon for us to hear from them that they made a recommendation to the president and they went in the opposite direction. we don t usually hear about that kind of behind the scenes advice and counsel and, again, they aren t specifically saying that here but they are making it clear that that was their advice. but to a person they re also coming out afterwards saying, look, the president made his decision and we accepted it and carrying out. it is a lawful order and we decided to move forward with it. i don t hear them second guessing the decision. i haven t heard that from yesterday or today. that s interesting. instead they re saying, look, civilian control of the military. he made the decision. it s a policy decision and we re carrying it out as a lawful order. that s one thing i was struck by. the reporting has been out there since april that the president made the decision to withdrawal. we have been hearing from defense officials this was not the recom