Pramila Jayapal Tells CNN Spending Bill Not About ‘Price Tag’: ‘Let’s Get Our Priorities In, and Then We’ll Figure Out What It Actually Costs’
Progressive caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal said that the reconciliation bill has “never been about the price tag,” but about getting their “priorities” in. However, she also said the other side’s proposed price tag is “too small.”
Speaking with Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union, Rep. Jayapal said that the internal strife in the party and the House is about what they want to have included and that the particular dollar amount doesn’t really matter. Except for when the price isn’t tag enough.
“Some top Democrats and White House officials are floating a $2.1 trillion package, a lot smaller than what you are currently at, $3.5 trillion,” Bash said on the topic of the negotiations. “Are you open to $2.1 trillion?”
“Well, what we have said from the beginning is it’s never been about the price tag. It’s about what we want to deliver,” Jayapal replied. “The price tag comes out of that.”
She acknowledged that the progressives have more negotiating to do, having not convinced a sufficient amount of Senators or settled the disagreements in the House, and said they intend to make sure the “critical” spending they identified is part of the final deal.
“The critical thing is, let’s get our priorities in, and then we will figure out what it actually costs,” she said.
Bash persisted on the numbers, asking whether $2 trillion is the progressives’ “absolute floor” in negotiating, to which Jayapal again replied that they are “not thinking about the number.”
When Bash said that this has been Jayapal’s “sole focus” for a long time now, and asked whether she had at least some idea of what it would cost, Jayapal again insisted that “we don’t know what the number is yet.”
“I don’t feel the need to give a number, because I gave my number. It was 3.5,” she added, giving a number and saying in a negotiation you don’t “bid against yourself.”
Bash then took a different tack, bringing up Senator Joe Manchin‘s alternative spending proposal, saying “So, if we’re not looking at numbers, what about 1.5 like what Senator Manchin–”
Jayapal immediately shot down that number. “Well, that’s not going to happen,” she said.
Bash asked why not, and Jayapal made it about the price tag, arguing his price tag is “too small to get our priorities in.”
“it’s going to be somewhere between 1.5 [trillion dollars] and 3.5 [trillion dollars]” said Jayapal of the price tag which the negotiation is not about.
Watch the clip above, via CNN.
