(WASHINGTON) — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is “optimistic” that the bipartisan infrastructure bill will pass the House and Senate, he said Sunday.

“We’re very optimistic the president put forward this framework because he believes that it will pass the House in the Senate and can get to his desk, and as soon as it does, it’s going to make such a difference in the lives of Americans,” Buttigieg told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.

Congress was not able to reach a deal on President Joe Biden’s $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill as the House pushed off the vote before Biden left for his trip to the G20 summit in Italy.

In her dear colleague letter that she sent out Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reiterated members’ support for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, even though the vote has been postponed.

“The good news is that most members who were not prepared for a yes vote today have expressed their commitment to support the BIF.”

Even though there seems to be consensus among House members that they are prepared to pass the infrastructure bill, Stephanopoulos pointed out that a new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows that 69% of the public does not know much about what is in the bill, and 32% believe the bill will hurt them.

Buttigieg responded by focusing on the family-focused aspects of the bill, such as affordable child care, universal preschool and a possible child tax credit expansion. He addressed the audience directly saying, “[if] you have kids, nine out of 10 chance that you will personally benefit to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars from that child tax credit expansion.”

Stephanopoulos pressed Buttigieg over paid family leave being dropped from the bill and asked if there’s any chance of bringing the provision back.

“It’s definitely something that we believe in, and so while it is not in this framework, we’re gonna keep fighting for it,” Buttigieg said.

Despite the changes to the framework, Buttigieg defended the current state of the infrastructure package and said there’s a “sense of urgency” to get the bill passed because “American people are impatient to see pro-family policies.”

“It is the most transformative legislation for families, for health care, [and] for climate that we’ve seen, certainly in my lifetime, and it’s going to be an extraordinary achievement,” he said.

The secretary also mentioned an almost $12,500 discount on electric vehicles in an effort to “benefit the climate” and create more American jobs.

“So, look, whether you’re a policy wonk or whether you’re just trying to get through life raising your family, anybody who has ever driven on a road or a bridge, anybody who drinks water … anybody concerned about internet access coming to a neighborhood near you, this bill is for you,” Buttigieg said.

Even though Buttigieg is optimistic the bill will pass, Stephanopoulos pointed out that we have yet to see support for the bill from Democratic moderates Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

“Again, we’re the closest we have ever been,” Buttigieg said. “The president put forward this framework having talked to them and others throughout the progressive and moderate wings of our party, confident that it will pass.”

“I know you’re confident, but what are the consequences of failure?” Stephanopoulos pressed.

“Look, we just have to get this done. And I’m not just saying that politically. … We need bold action to set us up for success, not just getting through the winter but getting through the next decade and beyond,” Buttigieg said.

ABC News’ Quinn Scanlan contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said Sunday he, Rep. Liz Cheney and “a few others” are the only House Republicans “telling the truth.”

“You can fight to try to tell the truth, you can fight against the cancer in the Republican Party of lies of conspiracy of dishonesty,” Kinzinger told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview. “There are about 190 people in the Republican Party that aren’t going to say a word, and there’s a leader of the Republican caucus that is embracing Donald Trump with all he can.”

Kinzinger announced Friday he will not seek reelection to Congress next term. Among House Republicans, the Illinois congressman is one of the most prominent critics of former President Donald Trump and was one of 10 Republicans in the House to vote to impeach Trump following the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Kinzinger, who serves on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, said in a video posted to Twitter the “time is now” to move on from serving in Congress.

“In order to break the narrative, I cannot focus on both a real election to Congress and a broader fight nationwide,” he said in the five-minute video. “I want to make it clear, this isn’t the end of my political future, but the beginning.”

Stephanopoulos pressed Kinzinger on what led him to make the decision.

“Just a month ago, you were confident you were going to run again, what changed? Was it the redistricting plan that was put forward by Democrats in Illinois that basically squeezed you out of your district?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“It’s a couple of things — it’s sitting back and saying, ‘OK, what happens if I win again?’ I go back, and Republicans will probably be in the majority,” Kinzinger responded. “I’m going to be fighting even harder on some of these things, and it’s been obvious over the last 10 months that nobody … I haven’t seen any momentum in the party move away from lies and toward truth.”

“Ten years ago, the Democrats in Illinois came after me, and threw me with an incumbent Republican, and they did it again — I’m not complaining, it’s redistricting,” he added. “But when Democrats do say they want Republican partners to tell the truth, and then they specifically target me, it makes you wonder.”

Responding to the news, Trump wrote “2 down, 8 to go!” in a statement referencing the 10 GOP representatives who voted to impeach him. Kinzinger became the second of the group to announce they would not run for reelection after Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-Ohio, did so in September.

Stephanopoulos pressed Kinzinger on whether his announcement hands Trump “another win.”

“Potentially, but I don’t think it was my decision that would hand Donald Trump a win,” Kinzinger responded. “I think it is — it’s the situation we find ourselves in.”

Kinzinger said if Trump runs for president again in 2024, “he’ll be the front-runner no doubt.”

“The Republican establishment now — whether it’s the [National Republican Congressional Committee], whether it’s Kevin McCarthy — have held onto Donald Trump,” he said. “They have continued to breathe life into him, and so actually, it’s not handing a win as much to Donald Trump as it is to the cancerous kind of lies and conspiracy” that are now the “mainstream argument of the Republican Party.”

“It’s not on Liz Cheney and I to save the Republican Party,” Kinzinger added. “It’s on the 190 Republicans who haven’t said a dang word about it, and they put their head in the sand and hope somebody else comes along and does something.”

Kinzinger and Cheney are the sole Republicans on the Jan. 6 committee. A new court filing released early Saturday morning revealed some of the records Trump is attempting to block the National Archives from turning over to the committee.

“I think if you look at that archive request and what the former president is trying to block, it is very telling,” Kinzinger said. “We are going to fight as hard as we can to get that, and the president has no grounds to claim executive privilege as he is today.”

Pressed by Stephanopoulos on whether the committee will have enough evidence to prosecute the former president, Kinzinger said he’s not comfortable making that statement yet but said the committee is continuing to learn new information every day.

“If the president was aware of what was going to happen, didn’t do anything — didn’t lift a finger to do anything about it, that’s up to the DOJ to make that decision,” he said.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — For the next two weeks, governments around the world will convene for a highly anticipated summit on climate change that has been billed as the “last best chance” to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and prevent the worsening effects of climate change.

Here’s how to make sense of all the news around the COP26 summit.

What is the climate summit?

The climate summit in Glasgow is called COP26, which stands for the 26th “Conference of the Parties” and represents a gathering of all the countries signed on to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Climate Agreement.

The group meets every year to discuss progress on the fight against climate change and negotiate how to fulfill the terms of climate agreements.

Last year’s in-person meeting was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic so COP26 will be the first time countries have met since the U.N.’s latest climate science report issued a dire warning that the impacts of climate change are getting more severe and that time is running out to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

COP26 President Alok Sharma said the pressure is on world leaders to ramp up their ambition to tackle the climate crisis at the summit.

“We still have some of the most difficult questions to answer. And we’re effectively in the last half hour of the exam,” he told reporters at a press conference organized by Covering Climate Now, an organization that collaborates with journalists and newsrooms on climate coverage.

Who will be there?

President Joe Biden and more than 100 world leaders will speak in the first two days of the summit to lay out their countries’ plans to reduce emissions and possibly announce new goals or commitments on climate issues.

But some important leaders from countries that contribute the most global greenhouse gas emissions like President Xi Jinping of China and Russian President Vladimir Putin are not expected to attend, citing concerns about COVID-19.

Influential figures like former President Barack Obama and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are also expected to attend to discuss the importance of taking action to limit the impacts of climate change. Climate activists like Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg are expected to lead large protests outside the official venue, pressuring world leaders to do more.

After the high-profile remarks to start the summit, other officials and negotiators from each country will hammer out technical documents detailing their agreements on climate policy and higher-ranking officials like Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry will meet with their counterparts to try to negotiate any sticking points.

What’s on the agenda?

Negotiators for this year’s climate summit will face questions about how to limit the impact of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as how to help countries adapt to climate change in parts of the world where the effects are getting more severe.

The most critical item on the agenda for the climate summit is increasing nearly every country’s commitments to decreasing climate-warming emissions as quickly as possible. Even with current promises to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, the U.N. says the world is set to miss that goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The latest U.N. analysis says current commitments put the world on track for 2.1 to 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming, which would trigger more dangerous impacts of climate change like worsening severe weather and drought conditions that could start to hamper food production in parts of the world or make it more difficult for communities to survive.

“The time has passed for diplomatic niceties,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said at a U.N. meeting on climate action this week.

“If governments — especially G-20 governments — do not stand up and lead this effort, we are headed for terrible human suffering,” he added.

In addition to ramping up efforts to prevent climate change from getting worse, negotiators will also confront questions about how to deal with impacts of climate change that are already being felt and how to support vulnerable countries struggling with changes like worsening storms and sea-level rise.

The Paris Agreement promised $100 billion a year in financial support for developing countries to combat climate change, but wealthier countries expected to contribute the most to that goal have not followed through, so negotiators will need to come up with a plan to meet that goal as well as discuss how much to increase it going forward as the impacts of climate change continue to worsen. That funding is meant to both help poorer countries build renewable energy infrastructure to avoid expanding fossil fuel use and make changes to adapt.

But representatives of those countries say even that isn’t enough.

Pelenise Alofa, national coordinator for the Climate Action Network in Kiribati, said COP26 will be important for the future of her island nation and the conversation about climate finance should include compensating countries experiencing effects of climate change for helping residents relocate or recover from worsening or more frequent severe storms.

Alofa said Kiribati and other island nations face an existential threat from climate change as sea-level rise and worsening tropical storms threaten their ability to live and produce food.

“As someone living in the islands in Kiribati, loss and damage from climate change is now a permanent feature of our lives. It is not about a one-time event or disaster. It is about rising sea levels that threaten to totally swallow our homes,” she told reporters in a briefing.

What does success look like?

The U.N. secretary general has said there is a “high risk of failure” from COP26, but there is not a single outcome that will solve all the challenges that come with the global climate crisis.

Experts say they’ll be watching to see if the Glasgow negotiations make tangible progress toward the goals of the Paris Agreement, including watching whether countries like China increase their commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and burning fossil fuels, and if parties are able to agree on steps that can lead to real, measurable results.

But ultimately, even a successful COP26 will still be more of a step in the right direction than a final solution to the climate crisis.

“We have to have significantly turned the corner by next year or the year after or else we have no shot of keeping 1.5 [degrees Celsius] alive,” Jake Schmidt, senior director of the international climate program from the Natural Resources Defense Council, told ABC News.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Negotiations on the infrastructure and social program bills have consumed Capitol Hill for months. Still, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll out Sunday finds Democrats are failing to sell the legislation to the public, who are broadly unaware of what is in the spending packages or skeptical they would help people like themselves, or the economy, if signed into law.

President Joe Biden was unable to secure a legislative win before departing on his second foreign trip since taking office, even after he laid out a framework for the package focused on social programs and climate change around which he believes Democrats can rally. He pitched that package, which no longer includes paid family and medical leave or free community college, as a “historic economic” opportunity on Thursday, but this poll reflects the continued confusion and intraparty mistrust over these bills.

Although a majority (55%) of the public is following news about the negotiations at least somewhat closely, about 7 in 10 (69%) Americans said they know just some or little to nothing about what’s in both bills. Fewer than half (31%) said they know a great deal or good amount. Despite Republicans having sat on the sidelines while the White House works exclusively with congressional Democrats to get both bills to the president’s desk, the lack of knowledge extends across all parties.

Americans also do not feel like these bills would help them or the U.S. economy if they become law.

The ABC News/Ipsos poll, which was conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, found that a plurality (32%) of Americans think the bills would hurt people like them if they became law, while fewer (25%) think it would help them. Nearly 2 in 10 (18%) think the bills would make no difference, and 24% said they didn’t know.

Even among Democrats alone, fewer than half (47%) think the two bills would help people like them. A quarter of Democrats think the bills would make no difference for people like them and about 2 in 10 (22%) don’t know how they would impact their lives. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Republicans think the bills would hurt people like them, and so do about 3 in 10 (29%) independents.

The American public is evenly divided — 34% to 34% — over whether they believe these bills would help or hurt the U.S. economy if they become law. Very few (6%) think the bills would have no effect on the economy, and a quarter don’t know. Democrats are much more likely to think the legislation would help the economy if enacted than Republicans and independents, 68% compared with 7% and 29%, respectively.

Biden’s inability to get these bills over the finish line has not helped the president’s mediocre approval ratings on an array of issues, which have solidified since the Sept. 24-28 ABC News/Ipsos poll.

His handling of the coronavirus pandemic and rebuilding the United States’ infrastructure are the only issues where a majority of the public approves of Biden — 56% and 52%, respectively — and neither is an improvement compared with the last ABC News/Ipsos poll. On both issues, he’s bolstered by near-universal support from members of his own party, as well as about half of independents.

Just under a majority of Americans approve of the president’s handling of climate change (48%) and the economic recovery (47%). Again, relatively high support among Democrats — 78% and 86%, respectively — keeps his approval from sinking too far.

Republicans are generally unified against the president on all issues, but overall approval for Biden takes the biggest hit on issues where Democrats’ and independents’ confidence drops.

While about half (49%) of independents approve of Biden’s handling of climate change, on other issues — economic recovery, gun violence, crime and taxes — independents’ approval hovers around 4 in 10.

The president’s overall approval dips below 40% on three issues: gun violence (39%), Afghanistan (34%) and immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border (31%).

Fewer than two-thirds (64%) of Democrats approve of Biden’s handling of gun violence. A similar share (62%) of Democrats approve of the president’s handling of Afghanistan. On immigration, Biden is barely holding onto majority support among his own party, with just 54% approving of him on this issue.

Only around 3 in 10 independents approve of Biden’s handling of immigration and Afghanistan, 29% and 31%, respectively.

METHODOLOGY: This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs’ KnowledgePanel® Oct. 29-30, 2021, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 514 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4.7 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions were 31%-24%-36%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll’s top-line results and details on the methodology here.

ABC News’ Ken Goldstein and Dan Merkle contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.