Democrats Try to Reset After Manchin’s Rejection

For many Democrats, Sen. Joe Manchin’s decision to oppose a roughly $2 trillion healthcare, education and climate package this week was a betrayal that suddenly sank the party’s economic agenda.

For the West Virginia Democrat himself, the announcement was the latest in a consistent stream of criticism of President Biden’s signature agenda item. As a critical vote for Democrats in the 50-50 Senate, Mr. Manchin has repeatedly questioned how the spending could affect rising inflation and debt levels—concerns that he said other Democrats didn’t take seriously enough in the talks.

“I’ve spoken so many times on television in telling people where I am,” Mr. Manchin, a former governor who represents a state that Donald Trump won by almost 40 percentage points in 2020, said in a West Virginia broadcast radio on Monday. “I have a problem.”

A close look at Mr. Manchin’s criticisms and his fellow Democrats’ responses over the course of the negotiations shows that Democrats spent months talking past each other before the talks fell apart, with poll ratings for both Mr. Biden and Congress dropping along the way. Their efforts now to revive a deal will test whether they have learned anything from the first failure—or if they are doomed to repeat it.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has said he would plow forward with a vote on the bill Democrats have been working on, unless the party works out another agreement that can win 50 votes. The White House and some Democrats have started outlining what a new bill could look like, focusing on a smaller number of programs that are funded for the long-term in hopes of eventually winning Mr. Manchin’s support.

“Sen. Manchin and I are going to get something done,” Mr. Biden said Tuesday at the White House.

When Mr. Manchin supported Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget outline to begin crafting the bill this summer, he released a statement saying he had “serious concerns about the grave consequences” of passing such a large bill given inflation and the debt.

In a document that he signed with Mr. Schumer in July, but didn’t become public until months later, Mr. Manchin said he would only support up to $1.5 trillion in spending in the bill. And in a September op-ed in The Journal that echoes his eventual statement opposing the bill, Mr. Manchin argued that a major piece of legislation would add to inflation and the debt and “create a disastrous future for the next generation of Americans.”

“People should have listened to what he was saying since July. The memo he gave to Schumer and the op-ed he wrote in The Wall Street Journal seemed to be exactly where he is,” said Jonathan Kott, a former top aide for Mr. Manchin.

During a Tuesday night call among Senate Democrats, Mr. Manchin again reiterated his concerns about the legislation, according to people familiar with it.

Democrats made two moves in the fall to try to reduce the cost of the legislation and make it more palatable to Mr. Manchin and other centrists.

First, they dropped provisions opposed by Mr. Manchin, including a program aimed at pushing utilities to use more clean energy and a 12-week paid leave plan. And they began reducing the duration of many programs in the bill to cut the price tag, hoping to fund provisions like an expanded child tax credit and universal prekindergarten temporarily with the hope of extending the funding in later legislation.

That winnowing effort culminated in a $1.85 trillion outline the White House released in late October as it tried to build consensus on the proposal and simultaneously dislodge a progressive blockade on the $1 trillion infrastructure legislation Mr. Manchin helped craft.

Mr. Biden traveled to a meeting with House Democrats and told them that the outline would win the support of all 50 Senate Democrats. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.), the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she believes Mr. Biden had a commitment then from Mr. Manchin, accusing Mr. Manchin of now going back on his word to the president.

“That lack of integrity is stunning in a town where people say the only thing that you have is your word,” Ms. Jayapal said Monday. Ms. Jayapal reached out to Mr. Manchin on Tuesday and asked him to specify which provisions of the House bill he couldn’t support, according to a spokesman for Ms. Jayapal.

Just days after the release of the White House outline, Mr. Manchin held a press conference and launched a fresh broadside at it. In addition to reiterating his concerns about inflation and the debt, he took aim at Democrats’ decision to fund many programs for the short term, calling it “a recipe for economic crisis” that disguises the full extent of the party’s spending ambitions.

As Democrats moved to try to finish the bill by the end of the year, negotiations between Mr. Manchin and the White House began to sour.

Mr. Manchin gave the president a proposal last week for roughly $1.75 trillion in spending that he could support. The outline called for 10 years of funding for climate provisions, healthcare subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and universal prekindergarten, according to a person familiar with it, in an effort to change the design of Democrats’ bill.

Absent from Mr. Manchin’s proposal was an extension of the expanded child tax credit, according to people familiar with it, a prized priority for the White House and many Democrats.

With negotiations dragging and a goal to pass the bill by the end of year slipping, the White House began preparing a statement saying that talks between Mr. Biden and Mr. Manchin would continue in the coming weeks. Mr. Manchin, who has been the locus of protests this fall, objected to the being singled out in the statement, according to people familiar with the talks.

“They put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable,” Mr. Manchin said during the radio interview on Monday. “I just got to the wit’s end.”

As he prepared to go on Fox News on Sunday and declare that he was opposed to the bill, Mr. Manchin didn’t personally reach out to the White House or top Democrats on Capitol Hill to alert them of his decision, according to people familiar with the situation.

The White House responded sharply, with press secretary Jen Psaki putting out a fiery statement—approved by Mr. Biden personally, according to a person familiar with it—that called Mr. Manchin’s opposition “a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position.”

Mr. Biden, who spoke with Mr. Manchin on Sunday after his announcement, and the White House have since toned down their approach to Mr. Manchin in hopes of putting some of the pieces of the bill back together.

Nick Casey, a friend of Mr. Manchin and a former chair of the West Virginia Democratic Party, said he expects that negotiations would ultimately pick back up.

“Whatever the dust-up was, my next expectation is things would move to ’we should be talking,’” he said. “There does seem to be a lot of good in that bill for a lot of people, including people in his hometown. And I wouldn’t expect that to go away because Joe Manchin quits talking.”

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Original Article: Democrats Try to Reset After Manchin’s Rejection (msn.com)