Sen. Joe Manchin threw a wrench into his party’s plans to pass an ambitious spending package by urging lawmakers on Thursday to “hit a strategic pause” on $3.5 trillion spending legislation.
“While some have suggested this reconciliation legislation must be passed now, I believe that making budgetary decisions under artificial political deadlines never leads to good policy or sound decisions,” Manchin wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. “I have always said if I can’t explain it, I can’t vote for it, and I can’t explain why my Democratic colleagues are rushing to spend $3.5 trillion.”
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The West Virginia centrist is not the first Democrat to express reluctance to support the price tag of the spending package, which Senate Democrats hope to pass along party lines using a procedure known as reconciliation. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, said last month that she felt $3.5 trillion was too costly. According to the reconciliation instructions written by Senate Democrats, the package cannot add more than $1.75 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.
Manchin’s opposition deepens problems for Democratic congressional leaders, who have to contend with a liberal flank that wanted to push the topline figure for the package even higher.
“Establishing an artificial $3.5 trillion spending number and then reverse-engineering the partisan social priorities that should be funded isn’t how you make good policy,” Manchin wrote on Thursday. He cited inflation and the national debt as concerns that he said his Democratic colleagues haven’t yet adequately considered.
House Democratic leaders struggled last month to contain a small revolt from Democratic moderates who wanted to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill before moving on to the reconciliation package.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi successfully allayed their concerns by setting a date for late September for the passage of the infrastructure deal but has maintained that she wants Democrats to move on the larger spending package before they take up the smaller, bipartisan deal, which the Senate already passed.
The fate of the infrastructure deal absent action on the reconciliation bill remains uncertain. Liberals in the House have suggested they won’t vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill if, by the Sept. 27 deadline, the spending package has not advanced.
With Manchin and Sinema in opposition to the sum that House Democrats have said they intend to spend, the intraparty negotiations could become more complicated. All 50 Democratic senators will need to support the final piece of legislation for the reconciliation process to work, and Pelosi can’t afford to lose more than a handful of Democrats in the House.
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Speaking at a West Virginia event on Wednesday, Manchin encouraged his fellow Democrats to “sit back” rather than rush to craft a historic spending bill in a few weeks’ time.
“Let’s see what happens. We have so much on our plate,” Manchin said at the event. “We really have an awful lot.”
Manchin’s announcement this week is not the first time he has stymied his party’s ambitions in a sharply divided Senate. He has also opposed expansive voting reform legislation, as well as changes to the filibuster that would allow Democrats to overcome Republican opposition.
