Jill Biden says bills aren’t footballs to ‘pass or pivot’

WASHINGTON — Jill Biden went public Monday with her frustration over a political process that she says treats legislation like a football to “pass or pivot” while real people, such as her community college students, wait assistance that would help them build better futures. But the “Build Back Better” bill ended up stalled in the Senate anyway, and one of those Democrats, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, recently declared that measure “dead.” On Monday, Jill Biden told the Association of Community College Trustees national legislative summit that the president will continue to push Congress to adopt the proposal. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the first lady was “speaking from her heart.” Myra Gutin, a Rider University professor and author of “The President’s Partner: The First Lady in the Twentieth Century,” said first ladies don’t take on Congress or call out their failures, but that Jill Biden “must have felt that she could not remain silent” on this particular issue. “Legislation becomes a football to keep away from the other side, and Americans get lost in the playbook.” Jill Biden said she and the president both knew getting tuition-free college wouldn’t “be easy,” but she was still disappointed “because, like you, these aren’t just bills or budgets to me.” “We know what they mean for real people, for our students, and it was a real lesson in human nature that some people just don’t get that,” the first lady said.