Biden walks back threat to hold infrastructure bill hostage

President Biden tried to shore up his crumbling bipartisan infrastructure deal in the face of Republican fury Saturday — by claiming that he didn’t mean to say he’d hold the legislation hostage to a monster $4 trillion social-spending bill that Democrats could pass on a party-line vote.

“That statement understandably upset some Republicans,” Biden admitted in a lengthy statement, two days after he told reporters “I’m not signing” the bipartisan deal “if this is the only thing that comes to me.” “My comments,” Biden said Saturday, “created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent.”