This is what the Associated Press says:
Congress is an angry place these days. Four years of Trump’s bellicose presidency, the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters and the high stakes for Democrats pushing Biden’s programs have taken a toll.
Frayed relationships are everywhere.
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said Wednesday that he didn’t want Democrats’ huge domestic programs bill, of which Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is a leading author, to make the U.S. “an entitlement society.”
Sanders criticized Manchin’s desire to curb climate change and health care provisions in the bill. “Does Senator Manchin not believe that our children and grandchildren are entitled to live in a country and a world that is healthy and is habitable?” Sanders asked.
The two represent opposite ends of Democrats’ political spectrum. Still, it was a highly unusual public airing of internal differences, and at a crucial moment.
In a letter to President Biden, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell unleashed a remarkably bitter personal attack on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. McConnell said Schumer’s “childish behavior” alienated Republicans who’d just helped pass the short-term debt limit extension, adding, “It has poisoned the well even further.”
