If Sen. Joe Manchin III can’t support President Biden’s spending agenda, it’s news to the White House, apparently.
“Senator Manchin’s comments this morning on FOX are at odds with his discussions this week with the President, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances,” press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
Coming from a White House that prides itself on collegiality, pragmatism and a we-can-work-it-out attitude, the statement was a remarkable rebuke of one of their own. It was similar in tone and substance to the fury directed at Manchin by House liberals, who worried aloud for months that Manchin couldn’t be trusted.
On Sunday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, accused Manchin of betraying the party: “He routinely touts that he is a man of his word, but he can no longer say that.”
President Biden and his aides had studiously avoided that kind of rhetoric until now. If negotiations between Biden and Manchin were crumbling earlier this week, you wouldn’t have known it on Wednesday when reporters asked the president what kind of progress he had made on Build Back Better. “Some,” he replied.
In Sunday’s White House statement on Manchin, Psaki shared behind-the-scenes details about negotiations, presumably to demonstrate just how close the White House thought it was to reaching a deal with him.
The legislation passed the House last month and the party was waiting on Manchin to sign off on a version of it so it could pass the Senate, too, with just Democratic votes.
“On Tuesday of this week, Senator Manchin came to the White House and submitted — to the President, in person, directly — a written outline for a Build Back Better bill that was the same size and scope as the President’s framework, and covered many of the same priorities,” Psaki said. “While that framework was missing key priorities, we believed it could lead to a compromise acceptable to all. Senator Manchin promised to continue conversations in the days ahead, and to work with us to reach that common ground. If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.”
Psaki is right that, at least publicly, Manchin sounded much more optimistic about the possibility of reaching a deal, perhaps before Christmas. As he left the White House on Monday for yet another meeting on the subject, Manchin told reporters: “Anything’s possible here. I’m engaged. We’re engaged.”
Congress went home for the holidays, but Democrats were optimistic they would get a vote next month. Counseled by Biden, liberal Democrats had lowered their wish list by trillions of dollars, tossed a marquee climate program and were even willing to set aside paid family leave, all to get Manchin (and, to a lesser degree, Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona) to support it. “It was entirely rewritten to meet his demands. This is his bill more than anyone else’s,” a House Democratic aide said on Twitter.
But on Sunday, Manchin went on Fox News and seemed to catch the entire party by surprise when he ended those negotiations. “I can’t move forward. I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation, I just can’t.”
“I tried everything possible,” Manchin added. “I can’t get there. … This is a no.”
Psaki tried to rebut Manchin’s objections by walking through them one by one — the bill is mostly paid for, she said (fact-checkers disagree); the climate portion will help create jobs rather than cut them. And on inflation, she said that “the think tank he often cites on Build Back Better — the Penn Wharton Budget Institute — issued a report less than 48 hours ago that noted the Build Back Better Act will have virtually no impact on inflation in the short term, and, in the long run, the policies it includes will ease inflationary pressures.” She added: “Many leading economists with whom Senator Manchin frequently consults also support Build Back Better.”
So rarely, if ever, has the White House publicly debated a member of its own party like this.
Psaki also accused Manchin of not representing his constituents well, a claim that bristles Manchin, who often says he’s the only Democrat who could get elected in West Virginia these days. Without him, Republicans would have the majority.
West Virginia voted for Trump by 39 points last year, but there have also been plenty of stories about working moms in the state trying to reach Manchin to request he support an extended child tax credit, and how Manchin makes millions from a coal company his family owns and he hasn’t divested from. The White House’s statement doesn’t directly mention this, but it all but points people to liberal accusations that Manchin is a sellout.
“Maybe Senator Manchin can explain to the millions of children who have been lifted out of poverty, in part due to the Child Tax Credit, why he wants to end a program that is helping achieve this milestone — we cannot,” Psaki said.
Psaki finished her statement by saying the White House would work with Manchin, “to see if he will reverse his position yet again.” But even in that olive branch was a not-so-veiled accusation that Manchin turned his back on the party.
The unbridled anger from a normally reserved White House toward Manchin suggests that Democrats’ spending agenda — legislation House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said would be the capstone of her career — is as far away as ever from being resolved.
And perhaps, so are all the other things Biden needed Manchin’s support for. This week, Manchin expressed a small willingness to tweak filibuster rules in ways that could help Democrats pass voting rights legislation before, they fear, it’s too late to have an effect on the next election.
Manchin released his own statement Sunday, elaborating on why he couldn’t support the legislation (mainly, its cost). In it, he vaguely said he would “continue working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to address the needs of all Americans and do so in a way that does not risk our nation’s independence, security and way of life.”
That does not sound like a senator who is still open to negotiating with the White House on much of anything.
