Asked about the administration’s legislative goals in an interview this week, Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, said the targets for the next several months included a bill to support American innovation and the semiconductor industry, and funding requests to battle the coronavirus and continue sending weapons to Ukraine.
“We’ve got a bunch of agenda items like that,” Mr. Klain said on a podcast hosted by Chuck Todd of NBC News, conceding, “The calendar has only so many months left in this year.”
Mr. Klain and others in the West Wing insist the president has not given up on larger ambitions. White House officials quietly continue to talk with lawmakers about some parts of what they used to call the president’s “Build Back Better” social policy agenda, which they still hope to pass with just a bare majority in the Senate using a legislative maneuver called reconciliation.
“The president also continues to work with a wide range of lawmakers,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said in a statement, “on a reconciliation plan that would cut the costs of prescription drugs, energy and child care while lowering the deficit even more and fighting inflation for the long haul, as well as a landmark bill to strengthen our competitiveness with regard to China.”
But Mr. Biden — who no longer uses the phrase “Build Back Better” because members of his own party distanced themselves from it when the legislation bogged down in bickering — has done little in recent weeks to revive parts of the $2.2 trillion bill that he fought for last year.