new description. focus now west virginia senator joe manchin. great to have you in focus. i know we ve talked about this for a while. nice to be with you. harris: we have been talking about this for a while and let s start there. how did this deal come about so quickly and so quietly? you were a hold-out like kyrsten sinema. i wasn t a hold-out. i was opposed to the bbb at 3 1/2 trillion dollars. when it came down to us last december i couldn t do it and i was up front and told him i can t get there so that s over. but i always wanted to do something i could for my country. this is all about my country, not about my politics or someone else s politics or my friends on the republican side or democrat side or whoever is upset with me. had nothing to do about any of it. what can we do for the country? inflation is the greatest threat we have hurting everyone
trillion dollars, then it came down to $1.75 trillion plan and now here we are, just a reminder to everyone, if democrats want to use this budget process, they have until september 30th, and they will be out for the whole month of august. i will let you do the math on that. and one more thing he said earlier today, he said i am, where i ve been, when it comes to this whole process. he is where he s been. it s a lot smaller than the democrats led people to believe it might be. i ll skip the math. i want to put on the record, a couple of improvements on the economic front, retail sales were up last month, and they surpassed expectations and the university of michigan s consumer sentiment index picked up a bit, to but there s a caveat, this from the survey director, the share of consumers blaming inflation for eroding their living standards continued its rise to 40%
and when he is wheels up for europe on thursday. brian, president biden very much wants to have one if not both of these bills signed and done by the time he leaves for europe: in part because there s a major climate conference convening this weekend, and he wants to be able to announce there that the united states has signed into law some major climate change legislation. that of course is contained in what had been a 3 1/2 trillion dollars social spending package that s now being whittled down effectively in half. my colleagues on capitol hill are reporting at this hour that it appears they re honing in on a deal for about 1.75 trillion or thereabouts, yet they re still haggling with senator joe manchin of west virginia, senator kyrsten sinema of arizona, over a couple of the key elements of that bill, specifically the expansion of
republican support. look at this. it is not even 3 1/2 trillion dollars. the bill that passed out of the house budget committee just two weeks ago is actually 4.3 trillion dollars in spending. it s the largest spending bill in the history of the united states to ever be before congress. it is also the largest tax increase in the history of congress, with 2.1 trillion dollars worth of taxes. it adds 2.4 trillion dollars to the national debt. it s an atrocious bill. it only makes every crises that our country is facing even worse, whether it s the border crisis, whether it s the inflation crisis, whether it s the energy crisis. this bill alone will create amnesty to 10 million illegals. you mentioned inflation, and i want to point up some figures. just in the last year, they are fairly astounding, gas is up
only 25% of americans find that they would have benefits from passing the infrastructure bill. in fact, less than half of americans want this passed. it doesn t look very popular. let me tell you, senator joe manchin, he is listening to the folks back home in west virginia. he s hearing them, hearing their opposition, and that s why you re seeing a lot of pushback from senator manchin versus bernie sanders. i mean, senator manchin represents one of the poorest states, one of the poorest states in the country, and this spending bill only hurts working class families. this spending bill only hurts the energy sector. but this spending bill definitely rewards wealthy folks in vermont. jon: 3 1/2 trillion dollars, there hasn t even been the ability yet to pass the 1 trillion dollars spending bill, on which there s fair amount of