joe biden. and don t start talking like a republican about asking whether or not he s president. it s joe biden. do you think joe manchin is the problem? and it s joe biden, and i m vice president, and my name is kamala harris. wow, margaret. maybe we ll call him charlamagne tha prophet. what he was pointing out, though, and what he was understandably defensive about is that in the public eye joe biden has been missing from the negotiations. and i am anticipating pushback from my left. but as somebody who worked in george w. bush s white house when he was trying to pass prescription drug reform, for example, or the medicare part d prescription drug benefit. when george w. bush wanted something, when you re a
to survive and they are responding by rationing their own care. they don t take the pills when they should. they get sick and people are dying because of this. it s a crazy thing. and yes, the inventers thought it would be greedily and wrong morally to jack up the prices and have claim on the drug. they want everybody to have it. that s not the case right now. this is an issue like surprise medical billing. it s not even been that partisan. you have 35 million americans with diabetic. republicans and democrats across the board got it. have to deal it. complaints about it. chuck grassly complained about it. how did it get done finally? it got done by sheer will. years of lobbying to push to do some kind of real prescription drug reform. two years ago when trump was
have between the bipartisan infrastructure bill and this framework, we will have $3 trillion of investment in our nation that we have not had before. in my column of remix, which is in energy, the amount of investment that will be for clean technology, putting people to work and having america lead in this as we go into cop is amazing. if you re doing a terrific job of selling what s in it. the problem is there s a whole bunch of people disappointed in what s not in it. you don t get everything you ask for all the time. the president campaigned and said compromise is not a dirty word. you are not so unrealistic to think the president is going to get everything he wants. i understand that. on one issue that has giant majority and support is prescription drug reform. take a listen to what the president said on the trail. allow medicare to negotiate drug prices. that will bring them down. we ll reduce prescription drug prices by 60%. reduce prescription costs by 60%
which, until now, spends $500 per child before the new bill. there are, however, a lot of important and popular programs that didn t make it in. they include increase in paid family leave. free community college. expanded medicare for dental and vision and prescription drug reform. that is a huge opportunity cost. america is missing the chance to catch up to other developed nations. parental leave. only six countries are as stingy as the united states about paid maternity leave. those are marshall islands, federated states of micronesia. nauru and palau and papua new guinea and tonga. you have moderates in the united states saying the richest country in the world cannot do more for citizens, but at this
plan, $1.75 trillion it includes funding for universal pre-k, elder care and a one-year extension of the enhanced child tax credit but to cut the price tag down, many items were dropped, including free community college, prescription drug reform and paid family and medical leave, a key proposal the president had been touting just last week we re one of the few industrial countries in the world that does not have paid leave. reporter: progressives had demanded a framework on the social spending and climate plan before they would support the bipartisan infrastructure bill and tonight some blasting the president s proposal saying there were too many cuts. clearly to my mind it has some major gaps in it. i felt a little bamboozled because this is not what i thought was coming today. reporter: many progressives saying they still don t trust moderate holdouts kyrsten sinema and joe manchin who today suggested the price was not too thigh. we negotiated a good number that would wor