Manchin Wrecks Biden’s Climate, Tax Package in Talks With Democrats’ Senate Leader

The Democratic Senator from West Virginia has made a name for himself challenging the party line on spending priorities, taking advantage of a 50/50 split in the Senate to drag out talks on the infrastructure bill last year, and later torpedoing President Joe Biden’s multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better social and climate spending agenda.

Senator Joe Manchin has effectively wrecked congressional Democrats’ hopes for consensus on a climate and tax-related legislative package ahead of the summer recess and November’s midterm elections, sources familiar with his talks with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have told the Washington Post, CNN and Politico.

According to the sources, during the discussions, which were held Thursday, Manchin torpedoed any proposed package that would include more spending on climate change, or tax increases on corporations and the super wealthy. The senator did express readiness to extend Obamacare for another two years, and to mandate pharmaceutical companies to negotiate with Medicare to lower prescription drug prices, but that’s all Schumer could get out of him, CNN’s sources said.

Democratic leaders spent months sweet-talking Manchin, who is not up for reelection until 2024, to try to salvage at least some diminished form of the Build Back Better plan after he walked out of negotiations on the president’s signature $1.75 trillion spending package last December, but it’s all apparently been for nothing.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat my disappointment here, especially since nearly all issues in the climate and energy space had been resolved,” Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden said of the breakdown in negotiations.

“This is our last chance to prevent the most catastrophic – and costly – effects of climate change. We can’t come back in another decades and forestall hundreds of billions – if not trillions – in economic damage and undo the inevitable human toll,” Wyden stressed.

At a closed-door meeting with business executives earlier this week, Manchin reportedly indicated that he would like to raise about $200 billion for deficit reduction. However, media reporting on the meeting indicated that the senator did not clarify where the money would come from.

The House of Representatives has two more weeks in session before setting off for its month-long summer recess at the end of July, with the Senate following suit in early August. Both houses of congress will return to Washington in September.

Americans will go to the polls on November 8 for the midterm elections, during which a third of the seats in the Senate, all 435 seats in the House, and an assortment of state and local offices will be up for grabs.

Democrats have expressed concerns that the tanking economy, record gas prices, high inflation and their association with the president may wipe them out in November amid polling showing that about four in five Americans see the former three issues as “very” or “extremely” important in determining how they will vote.