Manchin assails efforts to press him on domestic policy bill
WASHINGTON — A day after announcing that he would not support his party’s signature domestic policy legislation, Sen. Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat from West Virginia, offered an unsparing critique of the efforts by the Biden administration and senior Democrats on Capitol Hill to pass the sprawling $2.2 trillion climate, spending and tax bill.
In a 14-minute interview with a local West Virginia radio station, Manchin directly faulted White House staff and top Democrats for what Manchin described as a misplaced assumption that he could be pressured into accepting such a large package. He said that over six months of negotiations, they failed to adequately respond to his concerns and to sufficiently cut down the scope and size of the measure.
While he refrained from directly criticizing President Joe Biden, he had harsh words for members of the president’s staff, who he charged “put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable.” Pressed further, he refused to specify what infuriated him, beyond that it had pushed him to “the wit’s end,” and he believed it had been driven by White House staff members.
He ticked off a list of unaddressed concerns with the measure, including the lack of guardrails on new spending and its possible effect on inflation. And he said that he had only agreed to take up the bill in hopes of rolling back parts of the 2017 Republican tax cuts, an effort that faltered amid opposition from another key centrist, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
“I knew where they were, and I knew what they could and could not do — they just never realized it because they figured, ‘Surely to God we can move one person,’ ” Manchin said. “Surely we can badger and beat one person up, surely we can get enough protesters to make that person uncomfortable enough they’ll just say, ‘OK, I’ll vote for anything, just
quit.’ ”
Manchin continued: “Well, guess what, I’m from West Virginia. I’m not from where they’re from, and they can just beat the living crap out of people and think they’ll be submissive. Period.”
At the White House, Biden and his aides scrambled to find a way to move forward.
For Biden, the stakes are enormous. Just Thursday, Biden expressed optimism that he would find a path to compromise with Manchin.
“I believe that we will bridge our differences and advance the Build Back Better plan,” he said.
But much of the president’s optimism has been built on Biden’s belief in the kind of good-faith negotiations that he built his career on during 37 years in the Senate. One of his favorite lines is to declare that people can trust him because he has given his “word as a Biden” to follow through.
His expectation, according to people familiar with his thinking, was that Manchin, whom he considers a friend, would adhere to the old rules of that chamber, working toward a solution even if they disagreed about the details.
But the West Virginia senator’s declaration Sunday that he was done negotiating appears to have shattered the president’s belief
that Manchin was negotiating in good faith. The subsequent statement Sunday from Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary — which Biden personally approved — says as much.
“If his comments on Fox and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the president,” Psaki wrote.
The tone of Psaki’s statement underscored that Biden had reached his breaking point, just as Manchin had reached his.
It remains unclear what effort the White House might make to reengage
with Manchin or whether he would be willing to come back to the negotiating table with further concessions from the administration.
But, taken at face value, his statements Monday suggested that compromise could be unattainable without a serious overhaul and further concessions from liberal Democrats.
“It was never going to change — it never could change with that many people,” Manchin said. He added, referring to his party’s leaders, that “you all are approaching legislation as if you have 55 or 60 senators that are Democrats, and you can do whatever you want.”
Before Manchin’s public break with the White House, officials familiar with the negotiations said, Manchin and Biden remained at odds over a centerpiece of the plan: a one-year extension of an expanded monthly payment to most families with children, which is set to lapse at the end of the year.
Manchin was visibly irritated when pressed by reporters last week about whether he wanted to outright jettison the expansion, which he voted for as part of the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan in March. Biden also issued a statement Thursday where he would slip past a Christmas deadline sought by party leaders and directly named Manchin as a reason agreement on the legislation remained elusive.
Manchin’s remarks Monday came just hours after Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, vowed in a letter to his Senate colleagues to press forward with votes on a revised version of the plan. If Schumer follows through on his plan, it would force Manchin to cast a vote against the legislation, which passed the House last month.
Schumer acknowledged “moments of deep discontent and frustration” that Manchin and Biden had not bridged their differences over the package to fulfill a Christmas deadline Schumer tried to impose.
“Neither that delay, nor other recent pronouncements, will deter us from continuing to try to find a way forward,” Schumer wrote. “We simply cannot give up.”
Votes on the plan would most likely come in early 2022, Schumer noted in a letter to his colleagues, “so that every member of this body has the opportunity to make their position known on the Senate floor, not just on television.”
Much of the plan, originally envisioned as spending as much as $6 trillion to reshape nearly every facet of American life, had already been substantially scaled back by Manchin’s fiscal concerns and allegiance to his coal-producing state. Multiple climate provisions, including a key clean electricity program, were removed because of his objections, and a paid family and medical leave program was expected to follow suit.
Senate Democrats are set to convene a caucus meeting Tuesday to discuss the path forward. Asked if he would consider switching parties given the public tensions, Manchin suggested that he would prefer a Democrat.
“I would like to hope that there’s still Democrats that feel like I do — I’m socially and fiscally responsible and socially compassionate,” Manchin said. “Now if there’s no Democrats like that, then they’ll have to push me wherever they want me.”