While the House prepares to vote on the bipartisan Senate-passed infrastructure bill, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was pushed on whether President Biden is in charge of negotiations as progressives and moderate Democrats continue to battle.
During Thursday’s daily press briefing, Psaki was asked if Biden has “at all lost control of his party…[because] some people say that it appears that progressives are running the show, they’re banding together and making their commands. Other people are saying looks like Joe Manchin is playing president — so who is in charge?”
“Well, this is how democracy works,” Psaki said, before resorting to slamming the previous administration. “I know it feels foreign because there wasn’t much that happened over the last couple of years, but how it works is the American people elect their elected officials, the President of the United States puts forward a bold and ambitious proposal, and then everybody negotiates about it.”
“They have different points of view, that’s how democracy should work. We’re in the midst of it right now,” she continued. “We’re not trying to paint over how messy it looks from the outside, we know that. But what the good news is, is that there is agreement that among most Democrats — if not every single one of them — that we need to get something done.”
“Now we’re in the nitty gritty details which is very important, but that’s the end stage of this process,” she later added. “And the American people should know that that’s what the president’s working on.”