New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman admitted Thursday on CNN that President Joe Biden’s lack of visibility may be contributing to the chaos in Congress over the spending bill, stating it’s hard to “argue” with the government’s “bloat” in funds.
While Biden has remained notably out of the public spotlight for weeks, the president on Wednesday honored the memory of his first wife and baby daughter at a private memorial in Delaware. On “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer,” CNN host Wolf Blitzer pointed out to Haberman how “invisible” the president has been since Republican lawmakers opposed a stopgap measure to keep the government funded until spring, after it was introduced late Tuesday.
“Yeah, it’s, as David said, that has been the case for, literally, for weeks now. I mean, you would, there is the one president at a time thing, but usually that requires the actual sitting president to be more visible and to be part of the discussion. Yes, he took a foreign trip, yes, he has done certain things, but in general, he really has not been making himself, or some, last stages of an agenda felt,” Haberman said.
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“Now, could you make an argument that if you are Joe Biden and you realize that this is a mess that essentially was created by Donald Trump, you are not going to put yourself in front of that and take ownership? Yes, but then that becomes that everything is only reduced to being a political football as opposed to being about voters, and that is also a bipartisan problem,” Haberman added.
The NYT reporter went on to agree with a fellow CNN panelist that Republicans appear to not want to shut down the government. However, she noted that billionaire Elon Musk, who led the charge against the original bill, seems to have no issue with a shutdown, as the real issue remains the government’s “enormous amount” of spending.
“But Elon Musk doesn’t seem to mind that, because Elon Musk believes that there is an enormous amount of bloat in the federal government, which it’s hard to argue with objectively. It’s just a question of how you go about it,” Haberman said.
Following revisions to the original 1,574-page continuing resolution (CR), Congress failed to pass the new measure. House Republicans were unable to come to an agreement on the decision Thursday evening, pushing the government closer to a shutdown. Despite House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s warning on Wednesday that the new bill was dead, with no clear path forward, some Republicans had hoped to push it through. However, the final tally was 174 in favor, 235 against and one present, with dozens of Republicans voting in opposition.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/CNN/”The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer”)
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