Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) dismissed questions about whether President Biden should run for a second term in 2024 and underscored the importance for Democrats of winning Senate seats in this year’s midterms.
“I’m not focusing on that,” Schumer said of a Biden 2024 bid on Thursday’s episode of “Joe Madison The Black Eagle” on SiriusXM.
Schumer listed Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio as among the Senate seats he could see flipping to Democrats in November.
“If I got two or three more seats [in the Senate], the bill we did now, as good as it is, would be nothing,” Schumer said, referring to Democrats’ multibillion-dollar climate, health care and tax bill that passed the evenly divided Senate 51-50 after Vice President Harris cast the tiebreaker vote.
The Inflation Reduction Act was the product of an unexpected deal between Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — a scaled-down version of the Build Back Better bill that Manchin stymied.
Now before the House, the bill is aimed at investing in domestic energy and lowering prescription drug costs by closing tax loopholes on wealthy individuals and corporations.
Schumer on Thursday said that, with more Senate seats, Democrats could reach loftier goals.
“We would get child care. We would get paid family leave, we would get help for heavy elderly home care. We would get the kinds of things that, you know, Joe Manchin was against so we couldn’t do in this bill, we got a lot, but — so please, focus on the 2022 elections and let’s deal with the presidency after that.”
