On Tuesday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said that President Joe Biden’s legacy isn’t a huge problem for Democrats, and under Biden, “we did a lot of things for jobs, for stability.” And they would have passed further spending if then-Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema didn’t block it.
Co-host Brianna Keilar asked, “The president, as I mentioned, blames the affordability crisis on Biden. I think we expect to hear more of that tonight. And when Biden left office, he did leave a strong job market, falling inflation, but he also left Americans with steeper costs for housing, for healthcare, higher education, and childcare. And the White House is going to point to that. Does Biden’s legacy haunt the Democratic Party?”
Jayapal answered, “No, I don’t think so. We — as you point out, we did a lot of things for jobs, for stability. Had we passed the big investment, the $1.5 trillion investment in housing, had we passed universal childcare — that was stymied by two, at the time, Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. We could have passed those, and people would have seen that. That was supported by 99% of the Democratic Party. And I think it’s a shame that we didn’t. I had a lot to say about it at the time. But we know what the prescriptions are, and we know how to get it done. And you can see that we don’t suffer from scarcity in this country. People always say we don’t have money. But then you see an article about Donald Trump’s Pentagon trying to increase spending by $500 billion, and they can’t figure out what to spend it on. So, I think that this is where we have a real opportunity to deliver, to take on the big corporations that are monopolizing all these industries, to take on billionaires who are sucking wealth out of the system, and, instead, return that to working people, to poor people across this country, who deserve to be the actual participants in our democracy and share in the profits of our economy.”
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