Rhode Island Democrat and Senate Budget Committee chair Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told MSNBC’s Al Sharpton on Sunday that President Joe Biden scored a political victory by signing a debt limit bill that’s bad for America.

Appearing on MSNBC’s Politics Nation on Sunday, Whitehouse’s described Biden signing into law the bill that resulted from a deal with Republican House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy as an almost pyrrhic victory, one that tees up the president for a second term but otherwise is harmful to Americans.

He even suggested that the president’s “quiet” signing ceremony and lack of a “victory lap” was due to their understanding it was a win for Biden but the opposite for “families” and “people going to work.”

The surprising comments, which did not seem to surprise Sharpton, were in response to the MSNBC host asking Whitehouse how the bill will “impact priorities” in Congress ahead of an election year.

“I think he understands that in the cage match of Washington, D.C. politics, he gave the Republicans one heck of a thrashing,” said Whitehouse. “But in the world of policy and of families and of people going to work, there was nothing in that bill that was very good for anybody in America.”

“What he did do was he set us up for 2024 quite well by showing that the Republicans were extremists, by putting the entire House Republican caucus on record voting for a bill that would cost 700,000 jobs and provoke a recession,” he observed bleakly about the political calculation.

He called the president signing what he believes to be a bill harmful to Americans as a “very smart move” politically for the purposes of being reelected.

SHARPTON: Democrats would appear to be operating from a place of strength right now. How do you expect that to impact priorities across both chambers going into the upcoming election year?

WHITEHOUSE: Well, I think if you look at the quiet signing ceremony that Joe Biden had, he did not take a big victory lap. I think he understands that in the cage match of Washington, D.C. politics, he gave the Republicans one heck of a thrashing. But in the world of policy and of families and of people going to work, there was nothing in that bill that was very good for anybody in America. But what he did do was he set us up for 2024 quite well by showing that the Republicans were extremists, by putting the entire House Republican caucus on record voting for a bill that would cost 700,000 jobs and provoke a recession, and being unwilling to change one crooked tax loophole in the tax code. They defended all of the junk in the tax code. So politically, it was a very smart move and I think it tees him up to move forward towards ’24 pretty effectively.

Watch the clip above, via MSNBC.

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