«I indicated that I would refuse to sign the infrastructure bill if it was sent to me without my Families Plan and other priorities,» Biden said Thursday before walking back that statement.
President Joe Biden said Saturday he never intended to portray the idea he would veto a bipartisan infrastructure plan. He said Thursday while making the announcement of a bipartisan agreement, he wouldn’t sign the infrastructure deal if his American Families Plan was not part of the package. «I indicated that I would refuse to sign the infrastructure bill if it was sent to me without my Families Plan and other priorities, including clean energy,» the president said. «That statement understandably upset some Republicans, who do not see the two plans as linked; they are hoping to defeat my Families Plan—and do not want their support for the infrastructure plan to be seen as aiding passage of the Families Plan. «My comments also created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent.» Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy accused the president of holding the bill «hostage» by saying the Families Plan has to be tied in with infrastructure. «There’s a lot of conversations taking place right now as to what the president meant,» Cassidy said Friday. «That was not the understanding as we began upon these good faith negotiations.
