The New York Times
With Warning to Democrats, Manchin shows the way for Biden’s agenda
WASHINGTON – Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., flashed a warning sign this week for President Joe Biden’s infrastructure ambitions and renewed his plea for fellow Democrats not to push through a large spending bill without first working on compromises with the Republicans representing the president’s plans. In a divided Washington, the chances of such a compromise are slim – at least for an expansive spending plan of up to $ 4 trillion, as Manchin, a decisive vote in the Senate, and administration officials prefer. Nevertheless, Manchin’s calls for duality were less of an insurmountable obstacle for the Democrats than a roadmap for Biden if he wanted the party’s small majority of Congress to give him another victory in economic policy. Subscribe to The Morning Newsletter of the New York Times. It involves issuing Republicans to investigate possible areas of compromise while laying the groundwork to send them out if there is no agreement. Biden has already begun reaching out to Republicans, while senior Democrats in Congress are investigating a budget maneuver that will make the infrastructure bill pass quickly with only Democratic votes. Both are aimed at increasing pressure on Republicans to compromise – and, if they do not want to, give Manchin and other moderate Democrats whose support Biden needs the political coverage to adopt an all-Democratic plan. “I’m going to bring Republicans to the White House,” Biden said Wednesday. ‘I invite them to come. We will negotiate in good faith. And any Republican who wants to do that, I invite. “A moment later, he urged Republicans to ‘listen to your voters,’ arguing that voters across the United States are proposing Biden-scale infrastructure spending – not the reduced versions that have driven many Republicans. The comments reflect a major warning in Biden’s willingness to negotiate, which Republicans say could be any agreement: the president wants to be the one to determine the conditions of how big the problems are and whether the proposed solutions are adequate. Behind the scenes, his team is softening the ground for dual work. Administration officials are considering cutting out certain parts of Biden’s economic agenda into smaller pieces that could each attract ten or more Republican votes, starting with a bill focusing on supply chains and competition with China that the Senate goes to next week take. They discussed postponing Biden’s proposed tax increases on corporations, which the Republican opposes, if Republicans would come on board with a spending bill. And they have considered financing spending in any way acceptable to a critical mass of Republicans, including loans, as long as they do not raise taxes for people earning less than $ 400,000 a year. The negotiations seem at first glance to be a slower repetition of the party over the parties that produced a nearly $ 1.9 billion economic aid package this year. Praying begins with a great proposal. Republicans worked against a third as big. White House officials dismissed them as nonsense, Senate Democrats stuck with the president, and the bill was passed with every Republican vote in opposition. This version will last longer, in part because Manchin and other moderate Democrats want it that way. In interviews and this week, a prominent open-ended piece, Manchin, who may be the 50th vote the Democrats need to pass a bill through the budget reconciliation process, has his message blown out: Try two parties first. “Senate Democrats must avoid the temptation to abandon our Republican colleagues on important national issues,” Manchin wrote in the Washington Post on Thursday. “Republicans, however, have a responsibility to stop saying no and participate in the compromise with Democrats.” Many Democrats and Republicans say privately that there is little chance legislators can draft a bill that is as ambitious as Manchin wants, while also attracting at least ten Republican votes in the Senate. Liberals and conservatives are trillions of dollars apart in their appetite for how much they should spend and what they should spend – and nowhere near each other on how or whether they should pay for it. Some Republicans are pushing for a bill that is a third the size of Biden’s initial infrastructure plan, a version of their position in the debate on the stimulus bill, while rejecting Biden’s proposed tax increases on businesses. At the same time, progressive Democrats are complaining that the White House needs to get bigger, and it is unlikely to support a demarcated plan adapted to provide Republican support. Congressional Democrats say Republicans’ opposition to spending, which Biden – and even Manchin – has called for, along with widespread opposition to most tax increases, leaves little room for a common ground. “They do not want to pay anything,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. ‘I think the sooner everyone realizes that Republicans are not going to support these efforts, the better. But it goes well with people who try for a while, as long as it does not run out of time. ‘The Republican senators, who, based on their experience with the pandemic bill, responded to Biden’s gestures towards two parties by issuing a cold statement, saying that the last time he made a public plea to join to work, ‘our government has made our efforts completely inadequate to justify its own strategy. “In an appearance on ‘Fox News Sunday’, sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., Urged the administration to negotiate an infrastructure measure that would represent about 30% of the proposed $ 2.25 trillion, before going to budget reconciliation for any additional spending. increases. “My advice to the White House was: take the dual victory, do it in a more traditional way, and if you want to impose the rest of the package on Republicans in Congress and the country, you can definitely do it,” he said. Blunt said. Importantly, Republicans have no interest in raising corporate taxes that will essentially undo their Trump-era legislative performance. Nor did business groups that in the past helped negotiate a two-party compromise on economic issues, but have recently lost some power because populist impulses were drawn by both parties. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., The minority leader, calls the tax proposal an ‘attempt to rewrite the 2017 tax bill’, which itself was passed through budget reconciliation without Democratic votes. The Trump tax law “was, in my opinion, primarily responsible for us having the best 50-year economy in February 2020,” McConnell said. “But they’re going to break it down.” Business lobbyists and some lawmakers still remain hopeful that the call by Manchin Biden and congressional leaders for a set of mini-compromises on infrastructure could be made. Such transactions could include spending money on research and development for emerging industries, such as advanced batteries, in the supply chain bill, which provides dual sponsorship in the Senate. It could also spend several hundred billion dollars on highways and other surface transportation projects. It could satisfy at least some of Manchin’s pursuit of duality and give both parties the ability to achieve a victory. Some Democrats are concerned that such compromises could hurt the rest of Biden’s agenda, including upcoming proposals for education, child care and more. Others say the opposite: that a few deals will give Biden and his party a nod to the electorate, and later this year will accept a large spending bill, funded by tax increases, with only Democratic votes. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company