President Joe Biden spent the first portion of the evening not only confirming the various concessions he is likely to make in order to pass his Build Back Better agenda.

Biden spent the first portion of the evening in Baltimore not only confirming the various concessions he is likely to make in order to pass his Build Back Better agenda.

He’s a friend,” he said of Manchin, while talking about the difficulty in coming to an agreement with him on expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing benefits.

“And I think Senator Sinema is, as well,” Biden said, adding that hearing benefits were important to the senator.

After the fact, a White House aide clarified: “The President was referring to the challenge of having the votes to move forward on raising the corporate rate, not to the ability to raise revenue through a range of other tax fairness proposals which Senator Sinema supports.”.

Biden name-checked the West Virginia senator again when asked about the clean energy protection program, another component Manchin has opposed, before laying out alternatives for gaining his support.

“Joe Manchin’s argument is, ‘Look, we still have coal in my state, you’re going to eliminate it eventually, we know it’s going away, we know it’s going to be gone, but don’t rush it so fast that my people don’t have anything to do,’” the president said.

But Biden emphasized that no concessions had been made for Manchin to have coal in his state.

“I do think I’ll get a deal,” he said of his sweeping economic package, adding that he thought the negotiations were close to wrapping

“Look, I was a senator for 370 years,” Biden said, drawing laughter