presented by the American Beverage Association. Good Monday morning. I'm Adrienne Hurst and welcome to your

Politico Playbook audio briefing. Just how serious is Joe Biden about bipartisanship? Well, we're about to find out.

Today, he's sitting down with 10 Senate Republicans who are throwing down a counteroffer to that $1.9 trillion relief plan. Their proposal,

we're looking at less than a third of what Biden wants to spend, about $600 billion. The question is,

will Joe play ball here to get a bipartisan deal even if that means dealing with the wrath of the left?

So far, it looks like that's a no for Joe. It's pretty clear Democratic leadership thinks the whole idea is a joke.

Some senior Dems say the GOP offer is way too low to be taken seriously at this point, while Democrats control all the levels of power in Washington.

These Dems want to get a move on on reconciliation. And if you haven't heard that word a million times by now, that's the move

that'll jam the package through the Senate with just 50 votes instead of the usual 60 and VP Harris

as tiebreaker. Meanwhile, some GOP moderates are annoyed Biden hasn't done more to hold Chuck and Nancy

back from reconciliation. One of them told Playbook, Biden says all this great stuff about unity, but it's

like that old Wendy's commercial. Where's the beef? Now we have heard from some administration

officials who want to cut a deal, but others think that won't be necessary, arguing the president

can still pass a bipartisan test without Republican votes. And yep, you heard that right. Senior advisor

Anita Dunn told CNN Biden has a chance to build broad bipartisan support for his program,

not necessarily in Congress, but with the American people. It's worth noting that Biden agreed to

hear out those 10 Senate Republicans before he even huddled with Democrats in Congress on the matter.

And let's not forget the other Joe with a lot of power here. I'm talking about Joe Manchin.

The moderate West Virginia Democrat could grind this whole thing to a halt. He takes issue with

a few things in Biden's plan, including the overall price tag. And now he has beef with the VP,

after Harris gave an interview on local

West Virginia TV last week that was meant to up the pressure on Mansion to support Biden's

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