The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

As I told you previously, as I warned you about for months, the most likely outcome of the infrastructure bill was House progressives folding and passing the Senate bill into law, and then President Manchin and VP Sinema killing the Build Back Better plan slowly. We're well into phase two of that plan.

Red-hot inflation data validates the instinct of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to punt President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda until next year — potentially killing a quick deal on the $1.75 trillion package, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.

Why it matters: The data released Wednesday set the president and White House staff scrambling. Slowing down work on the massive tax-and-spending plan is against the fervent desire of the administration and House progressives. 

With a limited number of legislative days left in the year, Manchin is content to focus on the issues that need to be addressed, Axios is told. They include funding the government, raising the debt ceiling and passing the National Defense Authorization Act. Manchin, like a group of House moderates, also wants to see a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the true cost of each of Biden’s proposed programs, as well as the tax proposals to fund them.

The big picture: Progressives have long worried that after centrists got their $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, they'd find excuses not to move on the budget reconciliation package. It includes billions to expand the social safety net and fight climate change, among other Democratic priorities. 

Business groups also are stepping up their attacks on the package, warning congressional Democrats about its overall costs, potential effects on inflation and $800 billion in corporate tax increases.

Manchin still hasn't agreed to the specifics of Biden's plan to spend $555 billion to combat climate change. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer convened a call today with senators who participated in COP26, where they discussed how climate provisions in both bills were well received in Glasgow. During the call, the senators also strategized about how to get Manchin to agree to Biden's climate provisions — a recognition they have more work to do.

Driving the news: Prices rose 0.9% from last month for an annual inflation rate of 6.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The president labeled it "worrisome, even though wages are going up." He told a crowd in Baltimore: "[O]n the good side, we're seeing the highest growth rate in decades, the fastest decrease in unemployment ... since 1950."

White House chief of staff Ron Klain tried to couch Biden's spending plan as a long-term strategy to lower inflation. "What it does is it makes sure that our federal spending meets the things that families really need: bringing down the cost of child care, bringing down the cost of drugs, bringing down the cost of elder care, bringing down the cost of preschool, cutting taxes for middle-class families," he told CNN's Jake Tapper:

Between the lines: Manchin has been warning about inflation since the summer. He's argued Congress should take a “strategic pause” on the bigger package until Congress had more time to assess the effects of the nearly $5 trillion COVID stimulus spending in 2020 and earlier this year. His statements on Wednesday amounted to an I-told-you-so. 

“By all accounts, the threat posed by record inflation to the American people is not ‘transitory’ and is instead getting worse,” Manchin said. “From the grocery store to the gas pump, Americans know the inflation tax is real and D.C. can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day.”

 

Here's the hard truth.

 

Manchin has been calling the shots on this since July, folks. 

He's got the bill he wants, and now he can keep the BBB plan in the basement and torture it for months. He had the most hard and soft leverage in the fight, and the most willingness to use that leverage to accomplish his own goals.

It's time to ask Manchin what his future plans are, because he definitely has them. He's the Democratic version of John McCain, and McCain had his national ambitions too.

Just saying.