On House Democrats’ Agenda “Well, the most immediate challenge we have is making sure that we pass an Omnibus by the 11th of March, because at that point in time the authorization for funding ends. We also need to have a priority of getting the COMPETES bill done… that was our name for a bill that, in effect, makes America stronger and better by making sure that we can manufacture and be independent of supply chains from abroad, as we found during the pandemic, where we needed to rely on China and other entities to provide us with medical equipment that we needed. So I think that passing that bill is critical. I also believe that we need to continue to focus on voting rights, absolutely essential to make sure that Americans have the right, not only have the right to vote, but are facilitated in casting that vote, making it easier rather than so many states around the country are doing, making it more difficult.”

“The President will be talking about building a better America. I think as I just said that we've done two legs of that. The COMPETES is the third leg, and the Build Back Better [Act] is the fourth leg of that very, very critical agenda. Those are really the major items. Voting rights, I mentioned, is a critical agenda item, but I think we're moving in that direction. I would hope we could do so in a bipartisan way and to the extent that Republicans differ from specifics, we ought to breach those gaps, but building a better and stronger America is I think the President's agenda and vision.”

“Look, I think we've been a very solid party in terms of our unity. And I think you see that in the bills. For instance, Build Back Better, which we mentioned briefly, only had one negative vote... We’ve unified over voting rights, unified in the [America] COMPETES Act, unified in almost every piece in the infrastructure bill, so we've been a very unified party. Are there voices who want to talk about the nuance or difference that they have or addition or subtraction they would like to have? We're going to have that. But when you look at the votes, Chuck, and you know this, you see a unified party. We can only give up four votes and we have passed everything in the House that we wanted to pass. We're a unified party. But, yes, do we have different voices and different perspectives? Of course we do, and they want to be heard and they speak out.”