summer. affluent northern virginia suburbs, leslie vega is campaigning with glenn youngkin. i don t know about you, but i find myself having to go to three different grocery stores trying to make that dollar stretch. and i am tired of a government that no longer reflects the needs or the interests of we the people. vega is running against abigail spamburger, considered a toss-up, similar to other districts, suburban districts mostly affluent and typically blue or democratic seats. a short time ago, a high profile surrogate in a suburban new york district suggested republicans don t have the answers. here is the truth. we do have too much inflation
much do you expect to see that issue get a test drive over the next few days? just go into the midterms, there s no question it s going to be a central focus for republicans and people at the rnc are very confident they can capitalize on that. and it s tough to say somebody works as a federal public defender, and that makes them soft on crime, and so you don t really get to go after somebody for just having worked in the criminal defense space. it s hard to see how that particular line of criticism could function in a meaningful way for republicans going into these confirmation hearings. that said we do know moderates like abigail spamburger from virginia have raised concerns in relation to the criminal justice
luckily here to make sense of all of this, cnn chief washington correspondent and anchor of the lead, jake tapper, jake, i was naive enough to think when we knew we would be interviewing you today, this morning that we might actually be watching a vote on one or both of these bills while you were on. but now, why are they pumping the brakes? well, there are a number of moderate democrats, abigail spamburger from virginia. josh gottheimer from new jersey and others, who want what s called a cbo score. it s basic an explanation of what s going to cost what and for how much and how long and how the funding will work by the nonpartisan congressional budget office. and they want that cbo score before they agree to vote on the build back better act. a cbo score, of course, is not something that just, you know, takes an hour on the back of a napkin. it takes weeks. it s a very intense process, so
dignity and respect to live in their home as they grow older with a little assistance. there is a lot of things we agree on. to throw everything under the sun, and major policy changes, john, in a bill that no one participates except one party, whether it is a democrat or a republican, and it was never designed, reconciliation was never designed for major policy changes. i sat in bob bird s seat and he put the bird rule in. can i ask you one thing, is there a rule that says republicans can t vote for this? not at all. not at all. but they know when there is no participation you re not going to get either side. the same is we didn t participate in the tax cuts in 2017, john. it was all done with republicans and we, democrats were all against that. don t you think we ought to be able to come to agreement to fix the tax code. i ll come back to the build back better agenda in a moment. i want to stick with the lessons learned from the election if i can. abigail spamburger, from virgi
able to win in virginia. a lot take in there, harry enten, appreciate it as always. joining us now, cnn political national political reporter eva mckent. i want to pick up where we left off just as we look at what is happening with joe biden s popularity, whether he sort of misread certain rooms in this case and i m struck by what we heard from abigail spamburger who said nobody elected him to be fdr, they elected him to be normal, and stop the chaos. tolu, is that message getting through? well, joe biden did campaign essentially as the new fdr for the 21st century. he promised a lot of things. said he would be a transformational president, said he would have the most progressive agenda of any president ever elected and said he had been in the senate for 36 years, been in the white house as vice president for eight