Sen. Joe Manchin III upended President Biden’s domestic agenda on Sunday by signaling his opposition to the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, effectively killing the measure outright.
Mr. Manchin, West Virginia Democrat, told “Fox News Sunday” that he had struggled for months over whether to support the mammoth social welfare and climate change legislation, but ultimately could not because of skyrocketing inflation.
“I’ve always said this, but if I can’t go home and explain to the people of West Virginia, I can’t vote for it,” Mr. Manchin said. “And I cannot vote to continue this piece of legislation. I just can’t. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there. … This is a no.”
The West Virginia Democrat’s defection poses a death blow to Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda. Democrats were planning to move the bill via budget reconciliation, a process that allows some spending and tax measures to avoid the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold and pass via a simple majority.
Mr. Manchin’s opposition makes that path impossible. Given that there is united Republican opposition, the bill has no path forward to become law at the moment.
The White House was taken aback by the news. It said Mr. Manchin reasserted his support for the spending proposal just last week.
“Sen. Manchin promised to continue conversations in the days ahead and to work with us to reach that common ground,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. “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.”
Ms. Psaki said administration officials would continue lobbying Mr. Manchin in hopes he will support the package.
“Just as Sen. Manchin reversed his position on Build Back Better this morning, we will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honor his prior commitments and be true to his word,” she said.
Mr. Manchin said he reached his decision because of concerns that the spending package would exacerbate inflation.
“The inflation that I was concerned about is not transitory. It’s really slowing every West Virginian,” he said. “It’s making it almost difficult for them to continue to go to their jobs: the cost of gasoline, the cost of groceries, the cost of utility bills. All these things are hitting in every aspect of their life.”
With the national debt set to grow to $31.4 trillion throughout 2022, Mr. Manchin said, the country cannot afford the Build Back Better Act.
“There’s a lot of good, but that bill is a mammoth piece of legislation. … It would be a tremendous undertaking,” he said.
Mr. Manchin said Democrats refused to compromise on the size and scope of the package. Instead of cutting the bill down to size, the White House sought to lower the price tag by using budgetary gimmicks, he said.
“Everyone still has the aspirational things they want to do. They said we can still make this fit. ‘We’ll just cut it down to two years versus 10 years,’” Mr. Manchin said. “That’s not being genuine, as far as I’m concerned, with my constituents in West Virginia.”
Congressional Democrats have kept down the cost of the package by limiting the life spans of some of the more expensive programs, though the proposed benefits would be politically difficult to end once established.
Mr. Biden proposed a one-year extension of the child tax credit that would give $300 a month to families with children younger than 6. He also proposed a one-year extension of the earned income tax credit.
For more extensive spending programs, such as universal pre-kindergarten and child care subsidies, Mr. Biden proposed six-year life spans.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if all those programs are funded over the next decade, the bill will add more than $3 trillion to the federal deficit.
That cost proved too high for Mr. Manchin.
“That’s going to take a tremendous toll,” he said.
Republicans praised Mr. Manchin’s bravery for staring down his party and the president by refusing to support the package.
“With a divided country, a 50-50 Senate and blowout inflation, the American people don’t want to upend this country with nakedly partisan legislation,” said Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska. “Joe Manchin deserves credit for listening to West Virginians.”
Mr. Manchin’s fellow Democrats were less positive. Some far-left lawmakers even accused the senator of ignoring the needs of his constituents by opposing the package.
“Manchin’s excuse is bull——,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar, Minnesota Democrat. “The people of West Virginia would directly benefit from child care, pre-Medicare expansion and long-term care, just like Minnesotans.”
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernard Sanders, a democratic socialist from Vermont, said congressional leaders should bring up the bill for a vote just so Mr. Manchin could be on record as killing the package.
“If he doesn’t have the courage to do the right thing for the working families of West Virginia and America, let him vote no in front of the whole world,” Mr. Sanders told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
