Uh, Mr. Vice President? You had 60 votes.

I don't get this. The need to win Republican approval so the Villagers could golf clap the "bipartisanship" was self-imposed. So why is Biden blaming the GOP for the fact that they got the stimulus wrong, as Krugman and other warned?

Obey:

We started sending suggestions down to OMB waiting for a call back. After two and a half weeks, we started getting feedback. We put together a package that by then the target had been trimmed to $1.2 trillion. And then [White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel said to me, “Geez, do you really think we can afford to come in with a package that big, isn’t it going to scare people?” I said, “Rahm, you will need that shock value so that people understand just how serious this problem is.” They wanted to hold it to less than $1 trillion.

They wanted to.