The administration rejected this offer because it did not include a one-year extension of the enhanced child tax credit. In December, Manchin reportedly presented the White House with a $1.8 trillion proposal that included more than $500 billion in climate funding (enough to fund virtually all of Biden’s green agenda), prekindergarten, and a permanent expansion of Affordable Care Act subsidies, among other things. Put simply, in a negotiation between a group of lawmakers who all strongly prefer $1.5 trillion in new spending to $0 and one lawmaker who could live with either and is immune to their pressure, the latter gets to dictate terms.Įven after Manchin refused to back the House bill, the Biden administration refused to internalize this reality. As of November, his approval rating among West Virginia voters was 60 percent, while Biden’s was 32 percent. He represents a state that backed Donald Trump over Joe Biden by 40 points. Meanwhile, Manchin is all but invulnerable to progressive, grassroots pressure. As the senator told his colleagues in October, he is comfortable with a $0 Build Back Better bill - which is to say, he would rather see the legislation die than add substantially to the deficit, as inflation is now his primary economic concern. Much Democratic consternation was rooted in a denial of the fundamental asymmetry in negotiations between Manchin and his party’s mainstream. And although Manchin had pointedly refused to endorse the House bill’s framework publicly, Biden had led congressional progressives to believe that the senator had done so privately during his efforts to end their blockade of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. What’s more, they had allowed the West Virginian to veto the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP), a core pillar of Biden’s climate agenda. From their perspective, a large majority of congressional Democrats had favored a $3.5 trillion package and had generously chosen to meet Manchin more than halfway. Yet many Democrats took his opposition as a shocking betrayal. Nevertheless, when Manchin came out in opposition to the bill, no one should have been surprised. Meanwhile, Manchin’s position on the child tax credit - that the government should condemn the nation’s most vulnerable children to poverty so as to punish their parents for being unemployed - is so morally odious and sociologically ignorant that it was well worth trying to force him off of it. If Democrats could establish $1.8 trillion as the mainstream Democratic position on Build Back Better’s top-line cost, perhaps they could get Manchin to come up from $1.5 trillion. Over the course of his Senate career, Manchin has proven ideologically malleable, the substantive content of his centrism shifting with the political winds. This was a worthwhile exercise in many respects. House Democrats proceeded to pass a version of Build Back Better that (1) authorized $1.8 trillion in spending, (2) achieved deficit neutrality only because it phased out programs that Democrats insist will actually become permanent, and (3) included an extension of Biden’s child benefit that was free of any work requirement. Specifically, he told Politico that he believed “starting new programs that shut off a few years from now is akin to making them permanent” since “Congress will never be able to shut them off.” During that same period, the senator reiterated his opposition to “handouts,” demanding that Biden’s refundable child tax credit include a work requirement. Throughout September and October 2021, Manchin repeatedly emphasized that his demands on the deficit could not be satisfied through budget gimmicks. Manchin promised to vote for the legislation if it authorized no more than $1.5 trillion in spending, dedicated “any revenue exceeding $1.5 trillion” to deficit reduction, and included “no additional handouts or transfer payments,” among other things. Last July, the senator laid out his conditions for supporting the centerpiece of Biden’s domestic agenda in a written document co-signed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. According to NBC News, the party’s Senate leadership and committee chairs are working on “a new scaled-back version” of the Build Back Better Act - Joe Biden’s signature climate and social spending bill - aimed at satisfying all of the West Virginia Democrat’s long-standing demands.įor six months, the party leadership has tried to shift Manchin’s redlines instead of toeing them. The Democratic Party is finally trying to make Joe Manchin an offer he can’t refuse. Photo: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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