President Biden met on Wednesday with Republican and Democratic leaders from both houses of Congress for the first time since taking office, but the discussion appeared to make only modest progress toward resolving disagreements on Mr. Biden’s proposals to spend $4 trillion on infrastructure and families. As the group assembled in the Oval Office, Mr. Biden told reporters that he hoped to find common ground on infrastructure spending. He joked that he would like to just “snap my fingers” to achieve that goal despite fierce Republican opposition to his plans. “The bottom line here is we’re going to see whether we can reach some consensus on a compromise,” Mr. Biden said. “We’re going to talk a lot about infrastructure.”

Source: New York Times May 12, 2021 12:17 UTC