Riding high after his work helping Republicans dismantle democracy, Sen. Joe Manchin has imperiously declared that President Joe Biden is just going to have to start over in getting his support on the critical Build Back Better plan, the package the White House has been negotiating with him for months. As far as he’s concerned, he said, they need to start from scratch. Eventually.
“The main thing we need to do is take care of the inflation,” Manchin said Thursday morning, because that is a thing that has gotten stuck in his head as something that makes him sound serious. “Get your financial house in order. Get a tax code that works and take care of the pharmaceuticals that are gauging the people with high prices. We can fix that. We can do a lot of good things.” He’s also in no hurry. He wants the White House and Congress to ”get [our] financial house in order. Get this inflation down. Get COVID out of the way. Then we’ll be rolling.”
As assholish as that is, it’s not a surprise. Manchin’s been moving goalposts and reneging on agreements with the White House and fellow Democrats for months. He succeeded, again with some help from Kyrsten Sinema, in the goal of forcing House Democrats last fall to split BBB from the hard infrastructure bill, the two tracks the majority of Democrats had insisted upon to make sure that the critical provisions for human infrastructure and climate change were also addressed.
That one is largely on the White House; Biden told the hold-out Congressional Progressive Caucus “I’ve got this” and they took him at his word. Let that be the last time anyone trusts anything either Manchin or Sinema says. So now what?
In his press conference Wednesday, before Manchin’s start-from-scratch declaration, Biden said breaking up or paring down the bill are both possible. “I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now, and come back and fight for the rest later,” Biden said. “I’ve been talking to a number of my colleagues on the Hill,” Biden added. “I think it’s clear that we would be able to get support for the 500-plus billion dollars for energy and the environment.”
The salvageable parts of the bill are going to have to continue to be combined in a budget reconciliation bill because the provisions aren’t going to get 60 votes as discreet stand-alone bills. Budget reconciliation bills require simple majority votes, one of the 160+ carve-outs from the filibuster. The climate change provisions might be a thing that passes.
At one point, Manchin said that the $555 billion in climate spending is “one that we probably can come to agreement much easier than anything else.” Again, that was before the wiping-the-slate-clean demands of today. That said, most of those provisions have been nailed down. The biggest chunk is the $325 billion for clean energy tax credits, which is mostly decided minus ongoing talks (with Manchin, of course) about credits for union-made electrical vehicles and methane fees. That’s where we left off in December, anyway.
“I support President Biden in his effort to pass a Build Back Better Act that can get 50 votes,” one of the climate champions, Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, said in a statement after Biden’s remarks. “The climate and clean energy provisions in Build Back Better have been largely worked through and financed, so let’s start there and add any of the other important provisions to support working families that can meet the 50-vote threshold.”
There are other parts Biden envisions as possible, or did before the latest from Manchin. “I know that the two people who have opposed, on the Democratic side, at least, will support a number of things that are in there,” Biden said Wednesday. “For example, Joe Manchin strongly supports early education between three and four years of age, strongly supports it. There is strong support for, I think, a number of the ways in which to pay for this proposal.”
What’s probably out has been just about the most successful part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan, the big COVID-relief bill signed into law last spring that expanded the Child Tax Credit and sent it out in monthly payments. Those payments ended this month, adding to the desperation millions of families still experience in this pandemic. At one point, the White House thought they had a deal with Manchin on that—he’d drop his insistence on a work requirement if they trimmed the duration of the program from three years to one. He’s reneged on that, too.
The problem is, everything is absolutely a crisis. Climate is a huge priority for pretty much every Democrat. Even Montana’s Jon Tester, a farmer who gets it because he is a farmer. “And I will tell you that I just came off the worst year ever on my farm,” Tester told E&E Daily. “We need to do something on climate change.” There’s not a single Republican asked by The New York Times who would unequivocally agree to support any of what Biden and the Democrats have been talking about on climate.
The health care, education, and family support parts of the bill are critical to just about every House Democrat for their reelection campaigns this fall. “Some of these other pieces—the health care and prescription-drug proposals—are the most popular part of the package with voters,” Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and pollster, told the Times.
Those House members that Sinema and Manchin enlisted to help them derail BBB at the expense of the hard infrastructure bill need to be made useful now—they need to be put to work badgering those two ceaselessly to get the things they need to get done for their re-elections.
Those are also pieces that will have to be chunked together to pass in reconciliation because, again, there will not be 10 Republicans who will help pass them and there’s not going to be an end to the filibuster in the very near future to pass them. So it’s possible that there will be two reconciliation bills that have to be negotiated to get this done. That will be after, however, the next round of government funding is settled, preferably in an omnibus appropriations bill but potentially with just another continuing resolution. The deadline for that is Feb. 18.
“The main thing we need to do is take care of the inflation,” Manchin said Thursday morning, because that is a thing that has gotten stuck in his head as something that makes him sound serious. “Get your financial house in order. Get a tax code that works and take care of the pharmaceuticals that are gauging the people with high prices. We can fix that. We can do a lot of good things.” He’s also in no hurry. He wants the White House and Congress to ”get [our] financial house in order. Get this inflation down. Get COVID out of the way. Then we’ll be rolling.”
As assholish as that is, it’s not a surprise. Manchin’s been moving goalposts and reneging on agreements with the White House and fellow Democrats for months. He succeeded, again with some help from Kyrsten Sinema, in the goal of forcing House Democrats last fall to split BBB from the hard infrastructure bill, the two tracks the majority of Democrats had insisted upon to make sure that the critical provisions for human infrastructure and climate change were also addressed.
That one is largely on the White House; Biden told the hold-out Congressional Progressive Caucus “I’ve got this” and they took him at his word. Let that be the last time anyone trusts anything either Manchin or Sinema says. So now what?
In his press conference Wednesday, before Manchin’s start-from-scratch declaration, Biden said breaking up or paring down the bill are both possible. “I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now, and come back and fight for the rest later,” Biden said. “I’ve been talking to a number of my colleagues on the Hill,” Biden added. “I think it’s clear that we would be able to get support for the 500-plus billion dollars for energy and the environment.”
The salvageable parts of the bill are going to have to continue to be combined in a budget reconciliation bill because the provisions aren’t going to get 60 votes as discreet stand-alone bills. Budget reconciliation bills require simple majority votes, one of the 160+ carve-outs from the filibuster. The climate change provisions might be a thing that passes.
At one point, Manchin said that the $555 billion in climate spending is “one that we probably can come to agreement much easier than anything else.” Again, that was before the wiping-the-slate-clean demands of today. That said, most of those provisions have been nailed down. The biggest chunk is the $325 billion for clean energy tax credits, which is mostly decided minus ongoing talks (with Manchin, of course) about credits for union-made electrical vehicles and methane fees. That’s where we left off in December, anyway.
“I support President Biden in his effort to pass a Build Back Better Act that can get 50 votes,” one of the climate champions, Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, said in a statement after Biden’s remarks. “The climate and clean energy provisions in Build Back Better have been largely worked through and financed, so let’s start there and add any of the other important provisions to support working families that can meet the 50-vote threshold.”
There are other parts Biden envisions as possible, or did before the latest from Manchin. “I know that the two people who have opposed, on the Democratic side, at least, will support a number of things that are in there,” Biden said Wednesday. “For example, Joe Manchin strongly supports early education between three and four years of age, strongly supports it. There is strong support for, I think, a number of the ways in which to pay for this proposal.”
What’s probably out has been just about the most successful part of Biden’s American Rescue Plan, the big COVID-relief bill signed into law last spring that expanded the Child Tax Credit and sent it out in monthly payments. Those payments ended this month, adding to the desperation millions of families still experience in this pandemic. At one point, the White House thought they had a deal with Manchin on that—he’d drop his insistence on a work requirement if they trimmed the duration of the program from three years to one. He’s reneged on that, too.
The problem is, everything is absolutely a crisis. Climate is a huge priority for pretty much every Democrat. Even Montana’s Jon Tester, a farmer who gets it because he is a farmer. “And I will tell you that I just came off the worst year ever on my farm,” Tester told E&E Daily. “We need to do something on climate change.” There’s not a single Republican asked by The New York Times who would unequivocally agree to support any of what Biden and the Democrats have been talking about on climate.
The health care, education, and family support parts of the bill are critical to just about every House Democrat for their reelection campaigns this fall. “Some of these other pieces—the health care and prescription-drug proposals—are the most popular part of the package with voters,” Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and pollster, told the Times.
Those House members that Sinema and Manchin enlisted to help them derail BBB at the expense of the hard infrastructure bill need to be made useful now—they need to be put to work badgering those two ceaselessly to get the things they need to get done for their re-elections.
Those are also pieces that will have to be chunked together to pass in reconciliation because, again, there will not be 10 Republicans who will help pass them and there’s not going to be an end to the filibuster in the very near future to pass them. So it’s possible that there will be two reconciliation bills that have to be negotiated to get this done. That will be after, however, the next round of government funding is settled, preferably in an omnibus appropriations bill but potentially with just another continuing resolution. The deadline for that is Feb. 18.