Biden won’t let BBB die
Both President Joe Biden and White House press secretary Jen Psaki demonstrated during separate events on Tuesday that the administration wants to lower the temperature with Sen. Joe Manchin III, DW.Va.. Indeed, they will need to proceed cautiously while picking up the pieces of the Build Back Better framework that Mr. Manchin shattered.
Mr. Biden would not be baited into blaming Mr. Manchin for the breakdown of negotiations, although the White House press corps tried. Some people may think he’s not Irish, Mr. Biden joked, since he doesn’t hold a grudge. Asked whether Mr. Manchin broke his word to the president (something not even Mr. Manchin disputed), the president said simply, “Sen. Manchin and I are going to get something done.” Something. Maybe that is Build Back Better 2.0. Maybe it’s something else.
Mr. Biden was adamant, however, that the plan was not inflationary, pointing to Goldman Sachs’ downgrade of projected economic growth should BBB not pass. He also spoke at length about the bill’s cost-saving aspects that would benefit middleand working-class families (e.g., subsidies for child care and health care, caps on prescription drug prices). He also mentioned the bill’s extension of the enhanced child tax credit specifically, a provision that seems to irk Mr. Manchin. (By the way, one way to shrink the cost of the package would be to lower the income eligibility for items such as the child tax credit, which currently begins to phase out for a married tax filer at $150,000.)
The Christmas recess comes at a possibly fortuitous time for BBB supporters. Mr. Manchin will hear from all sorts of people before January. CNN reports: “A day after the West Virginia Democrat appeared to kill Build Back Better, America’s largest coal mining union put out a statement lauding the legislation’s provisions and pushing Manchin to take a do-over.” The president of the union, attentive to Mr. Manchin’s complaint about being “badgered,” politely the senator “to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working, and have a meaningful impact on our members, their families and their communities.”
He might be from a red state, but West Virginians expect their “conservatives” to secure big chunk of federal dollars. (The state ranks second in the country in its dependency on the federal government.) In a poll last summer, West Virginia voters registered overwhelming support for the deal. Given that the state has the fourth-highest poverty rate and the highest rate of diabetes (hence benefiting from the bill’s provision capping insulin at $35), it is not hard to figure out why. The state also has the highest rate of opioid addiction, the second-highest obesity rate and the second-shortest life span in the country, meaning the myriad health-care benefits included in BBB would be widely used. Granted, poor and sick people don’t give big campaign donations to Mr. Manchin, unlike coal interests, but they do vote.
Progressives are not giving up on the array of programs contained in the bill. But the shape of the legislation could change in any number of ways. In response to a question about the child tax credit and a plan previously put out by Sen. Mitt Romney, RUtah, Ms. Psaki made clear the White House was not fixated on one legislative vehicle. “[W]e are going to work with anybody who’s interested in taking steps to lower costs for the American people, whether it’s on child care or elder care or health care,” she said. “We want to get Build Back Better done because the comprehensive package is going to have an enormous impact, according to dozens of economists across the board. It would require 60 votes in order to get individual pieces passed.”
In other words, if Mr. Romney has nine other Republicans on board in the Senate who could accept a deal on the child tax credit, thereby reaching cloture, the administration could pocket that win and allow BBB to move forward on everything else. That is a big “if.” (Even if Mr. Romney doesn’t have nine votes for such a proposal, a Romney-negotiated plan might sit better with the West Virginia senator constantly watching his right flank.)
It is possible that Mr. Manchin is so thin-skinned and impulsive that he blows up the bill over some perceived slight, not an insurmountable problem with the plan. So yes, a revised BBB bill might still be in the cards. The good news for the White House is that once again, progressives and moderates in the House and Senate are sounding flexible and ready to deal with the single Democratic holdout.
Contrary to the favored media narrative, House progressives remain so determined to achieve historic gains on many fronts that they have been open to negotiations again and again – even after Mr. Manchin reneged on past understandings. On such a major policy initiative, Mr. Biden and his Democratic allies simply won’t take “no” for an answer.