There’s renewed optimism in the Democratic camp now that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WVa) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are talking directly to each other to try to reach a deal on President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better economic package.
Meanwhile, Biden met separately with Sens. Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz), the two holdouts to passing the economic package through the reconciliaton process in the evenly divided Senate. The president then held separate meetings with progressive and moderate Democratic lawmakers.
The Washington Post, citing multiple sources, said Biden told Democrats that he believed they could secure a deal on a social spending reconciliation package between $1.75 trillion and $1.9 trillion. That would be far less than the $3.5-trillion that Sanders and other progressives had come down to from their original proposal.
Democrats are more hopeful that they can reach a deal by the end of the week, putting them in a position to pass both spending bills by the end of the month.
“I think it’s very possible,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosii said after meeting with House Democratic lawmakers, the Post reported.
Rep. Ro Khanna of California said on MSNBC that at the White House meeting Biden made a strong argument that he could not go empty-handed to the U.N.-sponsored Glasgow climate summit beginning Oct. 31.
Khanna told the Washington Post:
“This was the most detailed conversation with the president going through every line item,” Khanna said. “It was very reassuring to see almost all the progressives’ priorities are going to be part of the framework.”
Democrats also have their eye on the upcoming Virginia gubernatorial election. A deal on the economic package could boost the chances of Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, who is in a close race with Trump-backed Republican Glenn Youngkin.
Biden was set to travel to his home town of Scranton, Pa., on Wednesday to promote his Build Back Better economic agenda and how it will improve the lives of working people.
The Hill reported that Manchin told a lunch meeting of Senate Democrats on Tuesday that he would work directly with Sanders to break the stalemate over passing both a $1.2-trillion hard infrastructure package, already approved by the Senate, and larger social spending reconciliation package.
“Universally there was a desire to get this done by the end of this week,” said a Democratic senator who participated in the meeting and noted that Manchin indicted he will try to reach agreement with Sanders on a framework for the reconciliation package by week’s end.
Manchin and Sanders met for the second time this week Tuesday evening just off the Senate floor, a sign that they’re working quickly to get a deal as soon as possible.
“I think this thing has dragged on for a very long time and the American people want it to be resolved,” Sanders said after the meeting, adding he and Manchin will meet again this week.
“I think there’s a strong feeling within the caucus that we either fish or cut bait to get this thing done or we don’t get it done but that it does not continue to drag on forever,” he said.
It represented a dramatic change in tone after Sanders and Manchin clashed over the weekend about an op-ed that Sanders wrote for a West Virginia newspaper.
In his piece in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Sanders argued that proposals to expand Medicare benefits and negotiate prescription drug prices, opposed by Manchin, would help West Virginians. The West Virginia senator fired back in a Tweet that Sanders wanted “to throw more money on an already overheated economy.”
But on Monday, Sanders and Manchin met and told reporters that they were working to overcome their differences.
Sources told The Hill that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would coordinate talks involving Sanders, Manchin and Sinema..
Schumer said there was “universal agreement” at Tuesday’s lunch meeting “that we have to come to an agreement and we got to get it done and want to get it done this week,” The Hill reported.
On Wednesday,Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent reported that Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown had a long talk with Manchin on Tuesday about the expanded child tax credit. Brown, Manchin and Montana Sen. Jon Tester are the only Senate Democrats representing red states.
Brown said he had urged Manchin to appreciate how much expanding the child tax credit to send $300 pr month to most American families has done for low-income famillies in their two states. Manchin had called for lowering the threshold to received the expanded child tax credit from $150,000 to $60,000 and imposing a work requirement.
“It’s dropped the child poverty rate by 40 percent in West Virginia and Ohio — I made that case to Joe,” Brown told me. “Why change something that’s working so well?”
Brown said he’s cautiously optimistic that Manchin is coming around. “He was listening,” Brown told me.
Brown said he told Manchin that he’d be willing to phase out the child tax credit at the higher end faster than it currently does. But Brown stressed to Manchin that a work requirement and $60,000 threshold would reverse the progress that’s already been made.
House progressives have blocked a vote on the $1.2 million infrastructure bill already passed by the Senate, saying they want the Senate to first vote on the larger social spending package that Democrats want to pass through the budget reconciliation process to get around a Republican filibuster. That would require the votes of all 50 Democratic caucus members plus Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Washington Post reported that their sources said the $1.75 trillion to $1.9 trillion package would allow Democrats to accomplish some of their most significant priorities, including funds to combat climate change, new initiatives on paid family and medical leave, and an expansion of Medicare to offer new dental, vision and hearing benefits.
But the newspaper added that slimming down the package would require some sacrifices. The sources told the Post that these might include extending the child tax credit payments for only one additional year, reducing the amount of new funding to make housing more affordable, and providing paid family leave for four weeks rather than 12 weeks.
A plan to provide universal prekindergarten remains intact, but Democrats could end up shelving a related effort to provide two years of community college to Americans.
It also looks like a program that would have paid utilities that switched to clean energy and penalized those that do not has been scrapped. That’s the one that Manchin was particularly opposed to because he saw it as hurting the coal mining industry in his state.
But Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told the Post that liberal lawmakers would look at alternatives that would accomplish the desired goals — perhaps subsidies or tax breaks for solar and wind energy projects.
(Updates with new details, including Sen. Sherrod Brown meeting with Manchin on the expanded child tax credit, quote from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and details on compromises under discussion.)