Biden’s dilemma: Satisfying Manchin risks losing other Democrats
It’s Washington’s enduring question: What does Joe Manchin want?
But increasingly the answer is crystal clear. The conservative West Virginia Democrat wants to dismantle President Joe Biden’s proposed climatechange strategies and social-services expansion in ways that are unacceptable for most in his party.
So the question becomes less about what Manchin wants and more about whether Biden can bring him, the party’s other centrist senators and its progressives to middle ground and salvage his once-sweeping $3.5 trillion proposal from collapse.
As the White
House pushes its Democratic allies on Capitol Hill to wrap up slogging negotiations before endof-themonth deadlines, pressure is mounting on the party to hold its slim majority in Congress together to deliver on Biden’s priorities. He will meet with House lawmakers from both groups again on Tuesday at the White House.
“We are at a point where we feel an urgency to move things forward,” Biden press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged Monday.
Manchin has balked at the size and scale of Biden’s plan to expand the social-safety net, tackle climate change and confront income inequality.
Already, he and fellow centrists, including Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have forced Biden to concede that the final price tag will likely be much smaller, likely around $2 trillion — largely paid for with higher taxes on corporations and people earning more than $400,000 per year.
But as negotiators sift through the details of what’s in and out of the proposal, it’s Manchin’s priorities that are driving much of the debate, infuriating colleagues and complicating a deal.
To start, Manchin is on board with raising the corporate tax rate to 25%, though not quite as much as the 26.5% that Democrats have proposed, to finance Biden’s expansive vision, agreeing that corporations should pay their “fair share” at a time when many have reported paying zero taxes.
But after that, the coalstate senator parts ways with progressives and most others in his party.
By insisting on a “fuel neutral” approach to energy policies, he threatens to wreck the Clean Energy Performance Program, which is a cornerstone of the climate-change plan and would offer grants to power companies that increase clean-energy generation by 4% each year and fine those that do not.
On another major issue, by interjecting work requirements or income thresholds for government aid recipients he wants to limit new childcare and healthcare programs to the neediest Americans.
Manchin is testing the patience of his colleagues who see a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape government programs slipping away to his personal preferences. With Republicans fully opposed to Biden’s plans, the president needs all Democrats on board for passage.
Manchin says he has been forthcoming about his concern that some Democratic proposals might be detrimental to his coal- and gas-producing state.
In conversations with the White House over the weekend, Manchin reiterated his opposition to the clean-energy plan — this as Biden prepares to head to the U.N. Climate Summit at the end of the month and climate envoy John Kerry warns against failure as the administration seeks to regain leadership on the climate issue.