Biden should bring up each individual piece of his plan to force Republicans to vote against it: columnist

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne said that if President Joe Biden wants to play hardball with Republicans and conservatives like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), he should bring up each individual piece of the Build Back Better agenda.

A new YouGov poll was released this weekend revealing that the only things that Americans know about the BBB plan is that it will cost $3.5 trillion and that it would raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

When Americans hear about the specific pieces of the plan, however, they are overwhelmingly supportive of the plan.

So, the question that many have been asking during the Sunday political shows is why Democrats aren't shopping the bill all over the country, particularly in states with swing Republicans. That's why Dionne believes that Biden should speak out more about the policy.

"Biden needs to restore the sense he created early on that he knows where he's going. This requires refining his original objectives in response to events," he wrote. "The tension between bipartisan Joe and Democratic Joe is now unsustainable. Biden needs to accept that Republicans will do him no favors between now and the 2022 elections and turn this to his advantage."

But if Biden wants to force the issue, Dionne wrote that Biden should use a Harry Truman-move and push Republicans to say what they support and what they don't. Republicans, and the conservative Democrats, should tell the American people what they want to see cut to garner their support.

"Do they want less child care? Less health coverage? More expensive drugs? No tax breaks under the child tax credit?" he asked. "And do recalcitrant Republican governors want an unending pandemic? Biden's tough speech in Chicago last Thursday on vaccinations was in keeping with his growing militancy on the subject."

See the full column at the Washington Post.