How Democrats Defeated Mitch McConnell
The Biden administration has been revived. Last Wednesday, Joe Manchin announced that he and Senator Chuck Schumer had reached a deal on the Build Back Better plan, now known as the Inflation Reduction Act. This new agreement gave Democrats over $300 billion in green energy spending as well as health care reforms and spending for oil drilling in the United States. The agreement was baffling to most observers. They had spent months convinced that Manchin was constantly moving the goalposts on a deal. The reports from three weeks ago about the negotiations blowing up seemed convincing. Why did everything change?
Joe Manchin was likely going to vote for a BBB compromise deal eventually. Negotiations dragged on as long as they did because Democrats spent months trying not to conciliate the West Virginia senator. The party refused to structure the bill to his liking. They constantly tried to tweak the bill to satisfy their own stakeholders. While the party had leverage over most of those stakeholders, they had no leverage over Manchin. Therefore, he could hold out for months, long enough for practically every Democrat to cave and write a bill that did exactly what he wanted to the letter.
Manchin then took another step that ended up truly trapping Republicans. His decision last month to end negotiations was likely a sincere expression of frustration. But the announcement seemed to herald Manchin’s true colors to both parties. Republicans and Democrats bought into the “liberal” media’s narrative on the West Virginia senator. Never mind the fact that Manchin was a Democrat, a Biden-supporting Trump critic who bemoaned Senate Republicans and supported every one of the president’s judicial nominations. Both parties became convinced that Manchin would never be happy and never support a BBB-style bill.
The next step came from an issue where Mitch McConnell often emerges victorious. A bill for improving semiconductor production in the United States, the CHIPS act, had stalled in the Senate. McConnell objected to the bill due to a perceived frustration at Democrats pushing a partisan reconciliation bill. The minority leader did not care that most of his party supported the policies behind the bill or that he had no qualms with reconciliation when his party pursued it. The CHIPS act was simply a point of obstruction where McConnell could win a political point. But McConnell listened to and believed reports that Manchin was about to kill reconciliation. Republicans were so convinced of this that they dropped their previous opposition to a bill allowing for more investment in semiconductors, one that would give Biden a substantial victory.
Once that vote was taken and the bill passed, Manchin reversed course again and announced that a deal had been reached. This decision gave Biden two political victories. He received Republican support for the CHIPS act without the need for a potentially impossible reconciliation agreement. Then, he also received a small version of his BBB bill with the Inflation Reduction Act. McConnell’s obstruction was overcome.
Biden got both of these deals at a beneficial time for his presidency. He has been beleaguered for the past year by issues ranging from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to gas prices and COVID-19. Manchin’s decision gives him two substantial victories just as the general public starts to pay attention to midterm races. A BBB passage in November 2021 or January 2022 would have been almost entirely forgotten by voters by this point. Manchin’s delay helped put Biden’s successes front and center at a time when they may have greater political power.
Joe Biden has a good deal to learn from this incident. He has a supportive partner in Joe Manchin, a senator who is to the right of much of his party but still wants to support that party. Biden next needs to keep up the fight and try to find as many other small victories as he can before November. This effort will ensure that he is able to at least have a Democratic Senate for his final two years in office.
For 18 months Manchin has given a remarkably good impression that his policy preferences included “not one net penny for green energy.” Suddenly he has agreed to more than $300B for green energy apparently in exchange for credits and federal lease plans (neither of which are likely to be used much) and a pipeline to prop up the West Virginia natural gas industry for at least a few years.
This is not the Joe Manchin we have watched dealing with Schumer (see the “secret” July memo) or with Biden. It seems incredibly unlikely to me that he’s had a plan all along to spring a surprise on the Democratic leadership, or that Manchin, Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi have had a complicated deal that they kept secret all that time. Something has changed. If Manchin called a press conference in a couple of weeks and announced he had stage IV cancer and would not be available for votes indefinitely, I would not be particularly surprised.Report
I don’t know, I don’t feel like the reversal has necessarily been on Manchins part. I mean the man has said he was willing to raise taxes, was willing to do something about Medicaid drug, wanted money to go to deficit reduction and wasn’t willing to accept much expiration chicanery. The Party over all wasn’t willing to tell individual interest groups that their priorities simply couldn’t be included in this years reconciliation bill and just kept packing everything into the bill with reduced durations to try and make revenues and expenses balance out. Manchin wasn’t willing to budge on that.
It feels to me like, with the hour getting late and Manchin unambiguously serious the party finally told some of their internal factions “It can’t be done this time around” and finally offered a deal that conformed to what Manchin was willing to support.
I don’t agree with Manchin in his priorities or opinions but when you’re the 50th vote in the Senate, you are not afraid of passing nothing and the GOP is the way it is then you can pretty much call the shots. I’m delighted that Dem leadership accepted that reality in the end and it can’t be denied that Schumer ran the resulting bill through the Senate process about as seamlessly and quickly as anyone could hope. Now all eyes turn to Pelosi.Report
This is a good take.Report
Very short-sighted revenue raisers that narrowly target investment when they should be targeting consumption, but in a democracy you get the government that the median voter deserves, and that guy’s really asking for it.Report
So you favor regressive taxation then?Report