The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-07)

TUESDAY, JUNE 7 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

Manchin “was having these discussions with the White House, and trying to move ahead, and he felt like they put out a release speaking for him and trying to back him into a corner. It really upset him,” said Hoppy Kercheval, a West Virginia radio host and political commentator who has known Manchin for about 40 years. “He gets worked up and wears his emotions on his sleeve. And he boiled over on that one.”

The White House tries t o repair the damage After Manchin’s Fox News ap- pearance, Biden called Manchin’s cellphone. But Manchin had al- ready turned it off. The president left a voice mail expressing his frustration with Manchin’s decision to end negotiations, two people familiar with the matter said. When Manchin and Biden finally spoke later in December, Biden expressed disbelief that Manchin could jettison months of painstaking negotiations. Man- chin reiterated that he believed the White House had put his family’s safety at risk. The president suggested a cooling-off period, mentioning his mother’s admonitions about the passions of the Irish and the Italians. (Biden is of Irish descent, while Manchin is Italian.) For weeks afterward, the president and Manchin did not speak directly. Since then, White House officials have struggled to repair the damage. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain apologized to Manchin directly for any misun- derstandings, and Manchin ac- cepted the apology. White House officials have made clear that they are open to a significantly smaller bill that leaves out most of their initial priorities, recognizing a deal must be made on Manchin’s terms. In a shift from the fall, many Democratic lawmakers now privately recognize that their priorities will have to be jetti- soned to secure Manchin’s vote. The White House has stopped providing public updates on the status of negotiations. Senior White House aides continue to talk with Manchin. In recent weeks, Manchin has spoken to Ricchetti and dined in Paris with White House senior climate adviser John F. Kerry. (The dinner was previously re- ported by CNN.) More recently, Manchin also asked analysts at the Wharton School of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania to model an approximately $1 trillion spending package devoted pri- marily to spurring domestic energy production and reducing the federal deficit. Still, Manchin has made clear that he is not open to revisiting the kind of package under discussion last fall. “In his mind, everything that had got them where they were was unwound when the White House went over his red lines,” one person familiar with the dy- namic said. Sam Runyon, a spokeswoman for Manchin, said in a statement: “Last year, Senator Manchin made his concerns about rising inflation, geopolitical uncertain- ty, and the ongoing pandemic crystal clear to West Virginians and the White House. Right now, he remains committed to addressing inflation by paying down our national debt, reducing the cost of prescription drugs for hard-working Americans, and shoring up our national energy security, while addressing climate change.” Bates, the White House spokesman, said in a statement: “The President and Senator Manchin

negotiations. Manchin’s office asked the White House to take out the reference to his prior commitments, which Biden aides did. But the White House ignored Manchin’s request either to leave him out of the statement or to add Sinema. By then, Sinema had largely resolved her differences with the White House, and Man- chin was the key obstacle. “I had a productive call with Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer earlier today. I briefed them on the most recent discussions that my staff and I have held with Senator Manchin about Build Back Better,” the statement read. “In these discussions, Senator Manchin has reiterated his support for Build Back Better funding at the level of the framework plan I announced in September.” Asked if Biden was aware of Manchin’s request not to be named in the statement, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said, “We do not comment on private conversations with lawmakers.” It is not clear to many in the White House why the statement became such an issue. Manchin himself had spoken publicly for months about his struggles to reach a deal with the administration. The statement did not directly criticize Manchin, or blame him for the delay. The White House was not warned that nam- ing Manchin as an obstacle to a deal was a red line for the senator, according to one person familiar with the matter. One senior Dem- ocrat, upon learning of Manchin’s reaction to the statement, said he incorrectly assumed at first that the White House must have is- sued a different statement to have provoked his ire. “It was not like this was the biggest insult in the world,” said Dean Baker, a White House ally who works at the Center for Eco- nomic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank. “The idea you would have done something good for the country, but instead will not do it because you think someone in the White House may have insulted you is kind of crazy.” Still, the decision proved disas- trous. Once the White House statement was released, Manchin “was just explosive. The anger — you could not believe the inten- sity,” said one person who spoke with him around that time. Shortly afterward, Manchin texted Steve Ricchetti, one of the president’s top aides: “Steve, the statement you all put out tonight targeting me and my family was unconscionable and extremely dangerous. There will be no further negotiations,” two people familiar with the contents of the message said. Manchin allies say his reaction was in part driven by the number of credible threats at the time to his and his family’s safety. Senior White House officials assumed Manchin’s fury would abate and negotiations eventual- ly would resume. But three days later, Manchin tanked the president’s top domestic priority on Fox News: “When you have these things coming at you the way they are right now ... I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,” he said. “I’ve done everything humanly possible.” The White House responded with a blistering new statement accusing Manchin of “a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments.” Biden and senior White House staff also signed off on this statement, though it was attributed to White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki. Manchin’s anger did not quick- ly abate.

Manchin crusaded publicly and
privately against this budget
strategy, saying it could substan-
tially add to the federal deficit.
In a Nov. 1 statement, Manchin
derided the bill as relying on
“shell games” and “budget gim-
micks.” He called the strategy a
“recipe for economic crisis.”
“None of us should ever misrepre-
sent to the American people what
the real cost of legislation is,”
Manchin wrote. On Nov. 29, Man-
chin told Fox News: “Don’t do it
for one year, three years or four
years, or whatever. That’s just
disingenuine [sic].”
Other Democrats believed
Manchin had signaled his will-
ingness to support some tempo-
rary spending programs as part of
a broader agreement, two people
familiar with the matter said. But
Manchin’s concerns about the
budget structure of the plan were
intensifying. On Nov. 19, the
House approved a roughly $2 tril-
lion version, with every Republi-
can voting against it, that relied
on the temporary funding mecha-
nisms Manchin had publicly op-
posed.
Complicating matters, scores
of Democratic lawmakers — each
with effective veto power over the
legislation because of the party’s
narrow margins in Congress —
kept demanding the inclusion of
their priorities in ways incompat-
ible with Manchin’s demands.
Paid leave, stripped out of the
White House framework, was re-
introduced in the House, for ex-
ample. Manchin’s allies say he
was frustrated by the feeling that
a concession in his direction,
once agreed to, could later be
rescinded. White House allies felt
that Manchin’s positions could be
shifting and contradictory, mak-
ing it hard to produce an offer
that met his exact specifications.
The impasse appeared insur-
mountable.
Then, on Dec. 14, progress sud-
denly appeared to be at hand.

A fateful week in December

Biden agreed to resolve Man-
chin’s complaints about the tem-
porary programs, a move the
West Virginia senator’s allies
found encouraging. Striking a
conciliatory tone, the president
told Manchin that he was doing
the right thing in withholding his
support if he did not believe the
measure was good for West Vir-
ginia, according to two people
familiar with the conversation.
Manchin gave the White House
the $1.8 trillion written offer, an-
other positive sign.
The administration didn’t im-
mediately accept Manchin’s offer,
though: Not only was it light on
policy details, but it also excluded
the expanded Child Tax Credit
and included tax hikes Sinema
had opposed. The administration
knew that a deal without the child
benefit would enrage a large
group of Democratic senators,
while risking a spike in child
poverty.
Biden’s aides did not reject
Manchin’s offer outright, either,
viewing it as a starting point for
further talks. White House offi-
cials and Manchin aides agreed
that the administration would
put out a statement saying negoti-
ations would continue at a later
date. But the next day came and
went with no White House state-
ment.
Manchin’s team was on alert.
That night, Manchin confided to
a friend that he believed the
White House was “up to some-
thing.”
When White House officials
finally sent a draft of the state-
ment to Manchin’s office, it men-
tioned Manchin personally and
cited the prior commitments he
had made in Build Back Better

DEMETRIUS FREEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST
President Biden walks to Marine One at the White House on Dec. 17. Three days earlier he and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) seemed to
make progress in negotiations over the Build Back Better legislation. Then things fell apart.

breadth of the ambitions they tried cramming into one bill hurt the party overall. Republicans are expected to retake at least one chamber of Congress in this fall’s midterm elections. “The way the negotiation un- folded, the American people had no idea what was in the bill and no idea what the Democratic Par- ty was fighting for. We did not project the coherence the Ameri- can people needed us to project to get this across the finish line,” Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), a lead advocate of the enhanced Child Tax Credit, said in an inter- view. Their disappointment is bitter. Last year, Democrats believed they were on the brink of usher- ing in changes on the order of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. They have only a few months to avoid facing voters without having enacted a single permanent new policy, outside of last year’s bipartisan infrastructure bill. “This has really been devastat- ing for morale internally in the administration,” said one White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. “While everyone is proud of the work we did on the rescue plan and infrastructure bill, everyone thought of Build Back Better as the legislation that would be a watershed for our nation’s economy.”

are longtime friends who share fundamental values about stand- ing up for middle class families and a fair tax code. They deal with each other in good faith and have worked together to achieve rec- ord job creation and a manufac- turing resurgence. The President is eager to pass a reconciliation bill that takes on inflation and lowers many of the biggest costs Americans face.” When the White House this spring privately sent Manchin a proposal that attempted to reflect his goal to increase domestic energy production, the senator did not accept it. Manchin did not offer a coun- terproposal, either, opting instead to try to negotiate with Senate Republicans toward a bipartisan deal aimed at addressing the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. Those talks ap- pear to have stalled out amid progress between Manchin and Schumer over a deal focused on climate and energy, taxes and prescription drugs. The more limited package now under discussion reflects the reckoning in Democratic circles prompted by last year’s failure. Some Democratic lawmakers believe the party tried to do too much at once, rather than nar- rowing their priorities. Though their proposals are individually popular with the American people, Democrats believe, the sheer

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST A climate change protester with an image of Manchin holds figures depicting Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer a nd Biden.

Sen. Joe Manchin III

“was having these

discussions with the

White House, and trying

to move ahead, and he

felt like they put out a

release speaking for him

and trying to back him

into a corner. It really

upset him.” Hoppy Kercheval, West Virginia radio host and political commentator who has known Manchin for about 40 years

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The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-07)

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