Why Won’t Democrats Take Joe Manchin at His Word?

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Friday, January 21, 2022

 

When historians come to write the political history of the year 2021, they will wonder in amazement at how steadfastly the Democratic Party refused to heed Senator Manchin’s plain words. The declination was routine and complete. Manchin made it clear that he would not support scrapping the filibuster; 48 of his colleagues heard “there’s a chance.” Manchin compiled a list of the provisions he wouldn’t vote for; Nancy Pelosi threw them into a bill and forced them through the House. Manchin told Chuck Schumer that he would not consent to a Bernie Sanders–led spendathon; Schumer tried to pass the New Deal. If it wishes to have a better 2022, the party must kick this habit fast.

 

Asked earlier this week about the future of Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, Manchin made himself clear yet again. He is prepared to discuss the issue, he said, but, only if negotiations start “from scratch.” His terms? That, before anything substantial is done, the United States gets its “financial house in order,” gets “inflation down,” and gets “Covid out of the way.” “The main thing we need to do is take care of the inflation,” Manchin repeated. Beyond that, he wants to produce “a tax code that works” and to “take care of the pharmaceuticals that are gouging people with high prices.”

 

Once again, there was no mention of “transformative” change.

 

At his most recent press conference, President Biden suggested that, if his Build Back Better agenda is to be resuscitated, Congress will first have to “break the package up.” But this isn’t what Manchin has said, is it? Indeed, as my colleague Dominic Pino noted yesterday, if Manchin is true to his word, “there is no possible way that chunks of Build Back Better will be passed before [the] midterms.” Inflation is not going to be solved this year; the coming interest-rate hikes are going to make our debt problem worse, rather than better; and, while Covid could plausibly disappear this year, its seasonal nature makes its trajectory extremely tough to predict. Reflecting upon Biden’s suggestion, Nancy Pelosi proposed on Wednesday that “Build Back Better” needed a name change. But she, too, is wrong: What it needs is a substance change. If the Democrats write a modest bill that repeals parts of the 2017 tax-reform package and subsidizes prescription-drug prices, then maybe — maybe — they can get Manchin on board. And if they don’t? Well, you know the drill.

 

Are the Democrats capable of writing such a bill? There’s good cause to doubt it. Earlier in the week, Pelosi dismissed the idea. And, yesterday, Representatives Suozzi, Sherrill, and Gottheimer reiterated that they were opposed to any “change in the tax code” that does not include a restoration of the SALT deduction. “No SALT,” the trio insisted, “no deal.” Which, given that Manchin has no reason whatsoever to prioritize the restoration of SALT, is tantamount to saying that there is going to be no deal. Manchin, you will recall, has gone firmly on the record to complain about America’s “brutal fiscal reality,” to lament that the federal government “can’t even pay for the essential programs, like Social Security and Medicare,” and to warn that “great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending and bad policies.” The likelihood that, at this late stage, he is going to agree to reduce the federal tax intake by hundreds of billions of dollars in order to help rich people in California, New Jersey, and New York fleece the rest of the country strikes me as being about zero.

 

All in all, it is hard to tell what leverage the Democratic Party believes it still has over Joe Manchin, given that, since the push for “Build Back Better” started in earnest, he has been proven correct about almost everything. In November, Manchin groused that America’s “elected leaders continue to ignore exploding inflation,” warned that the debt was still growing, and predicted that “interest payments on the debt will start to rapidly increase when the FED has to start raising interest rates to try to slow down runaway inflation.” He was right. Today, inflation is at its highest rate since 1982, our national debt has grown to its greatest ever size, and the year ahead is expected to bring as many as four interest-rate hikes — all of which will cause increased “interest payments on the debt.”

 

On December 19, after Manchin had confirmed that he would not be shelving his conscience in order to please the institutional Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders insisted on CNN that Manchin should be forced to “vote no in front of the whole world.” What in Manchin’s year of public statements, one must wonder, has made Sanders believe he won’t?