Manchin’s wiggle room on $1.5T

The Joe who’s running the show on negotiations over President Biden’s push for $3.5 trillion in taxpayerfunded social spending signaled Tuesday he might soften his hard-line stance on voting for no more than $1.5 trillion for the Democratic package.

“Well I’m not ruling anything out, but the bottom line is I want to make sure that we strategically do the right job and we don’t basically add more to the concerns we have right now,” Sen. Joe Manchin (right) said when asked if he would consider a range of $1.9 trillion to $2.2 trillion.

The West Virginia Democrat’s comments came in the wake of Biden floating that range to a group of party progressives on Monday as moderates like Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) raise concerns over the cost and certain provisions in the president’s bill, The Washington Post first reported.

Progressives in the House — who have held hostage a bipartisan, Senate-passed, $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, resulting in Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) twice having to push back the deadline for a vote — counteroffered a minimum spending amount of $2.5 trillion, according to The Washington Post.

Democrats in both chambers passed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution earlier this year, allowing them to move forward with the reconciliation process without Republican support in the Senate.

But centrists, including Manchin and Sinema, say they will not support $3.5 trillion in additional spending.

And in doing so, they have effectively usurped power from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Pelosi — and even Biden.