Dems scramble to salvage social, climate package
WASHINGTON — President Biden, along with progressive and moderate Democrats, appears determined to return to the negotiating table with Sen. Joe Manchin, the holdout Democrat who effectively tanked the party’s signature $2 trillion domestic policy initiative.
In the days since the West Virginia lawmaker gave a thumbs down on the package, delivering a stunning blow to months of negotiations on Biden’s agenda, Democrats of the left and center have joined the White House in attempting to salvage the social services and climate change bill.
“We have worked too long and too hard to give up now, and we have no intention of doing so,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement Wednesday.
Jayapal said she and members of the caucus have been in conversations with White House officials about the prospects of achieving the plan’s goals through a combination of Biden’s executive powers and legislation, instead of legislation alone.
“The legislative approach, while essential, has no certainty of timing or results,” she said, “and we simply cannot wait to deliver tangible relief to people that they can feel and will make a difference in their lives and livelihoods.”
At the same time, White House officials have spoken with Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., chair of the House’s centrist New Democrat Coalition, on its plan to scale back the number of provisions but have them stay in effect longer. Manchin said he supports that approach.
But Republicans are voicing greater confidence now that they can beat back much of what they don’t like in the package.
“As we ended the year, it looks to me like they couldn’t swallow the spinach,” Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said Wednesday of the Democrats.
The Senate Republican leader also put his party’s courtship of Manchin on full public display. Manchin “feels like a man alone” and if he were to switch parties, “he would be joining a lot of folks who have similar views on a whole range of issues,” McConnell said.
Biden spoke Tuesday about the families who would benefit from the Democrats’ ambitious, if now highly uncertain, plan to pour billions of dollars into child care, health care and other services.
“Senator Manchin and I are going to get something done,” Biden said.