Joe Biden gave Pete Buttigieg the best birthday present ever

On Friday, President Joe Biden led a roomful of Democratic and Republican mayors from around the U.S. in singing “Happy Birthday” to out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, celebrated his 42nd birthday while attending the 92nd annual U.S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C., where he spoke about bipartisanship and touted the achievements under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, commonly known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

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At an event in the White House’s East Room welcoming the mayors to Washington on Friday, Biden acknowledged that it was Buttigieg’s birthday.

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“Pete turned 30 today,” the president joked of Buttigieg, the youngest member of his Cabinet as well as the youngest person ever to serve as U.S. Secretary of Transportation.

“My wife, she has a tradition in her family… and on everybody’s birthday, you’ve got to sing ‘Happy Birthday,’” Biden continued. “So, stand up and let’s sing ‘Happy Birthday.’”

Biden then led the room in serenading Buttigieg, who stood and shook the president’s hand.

On Saturday, Buttigieg posted another birthday clip on his official @secretarypete Instagram account, showing his staff presenting him with a small cake and singing a less fulsome rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

“I love surprises as long as I know about them in advance,” Buttigieg joked.

“Yesterday I would have wished for an appropriations [bill] or at least a [continuing resolution], but now we’ve banked that, I can go big,” he added before blowing out the candles on the cake.

The quip came after both the House and Senate passed a short-term spending bill on Thursday to fund the federal government through March. Biden signed the stopgap measure on Friday, once again avoiding the threat of a government shutdown.

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