President Joe Biden met with centrist Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema as his legislative priorities of infrastructure and voter access could be defeated in their chamber.
Biden broached both issues with West Virginia’s Manchin before the Senate votes Tuesday on whether to debate voter access. Although Republicans are poised to block the move, the White House is pushing Manchin to support the doomed measure so Democrats can present a united front and hold a debate on the floor that they calculate could come back to haunt Republicans.
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A White House statement about the Biden-Manchin meeting underscored voter access as a “shared commitment” after Manchin unveiled a compromise bill to see whether a bipartisan approach was possible. No Republican signed on.
“The president expressed his sincere appreciation for Sen. Manchin’s efforts to achieve reform,” the White House said Monday evening. “The president conveyed that he sees voting rights as one of the most urgent issues facing our nation during his administration and made it clear how important he thinks it is that the Senate find a path forward on this issue.”
Biden also discussed Manchin and Sinema’s bipartisan infrastructure negotiations while emphasizing his willingness to press forward with Democratic-only action via the truncated budget reconciliation process, which would allow an infrastructure measure to pass with no GOP votes.
“The president thanked each senator for their engagement toward making historic investments in economic growth, middle-class jobs, and the clean energy economy and told them he was encouraged by what has taken shape but that he still has questions about the policy, as well as the means for financing the bipartisan group’s proposal,” the White House said.
Manchin and Sinema’s narrow package has been endorsed by more than 10 Republicans, the minimum number needed for the Senate to pass the framework with the backing of all 50 Democrats. The plan would spend $1.2 trillion over eight years on traditional projects, including electric vehicles and coastal resiliency, though it is still less than Biden’s original $2.3 trillion pitch.
The White House and the bipartisan group of roughly 20 senators disagree, too, on how to pay for the programs. The White House would prefer to raise levies on wealthy taxpayers and corporations, a nonnegotiable for Republicans. At the same time, the White House does not want to repurpose unused COVID-19 funding or introduce user fees. The bipartisan group is still eyeing a gas tax hike, something the president opposes under his campaign-trail pledge to avoid raising taxes on most U.S. residents.
“The president’s pledge was not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $400,000 a year. And the proposed gas tax or vehicle mileage tax would do exactly that, so that is a nonstarter for him,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. “I’d also note, for the mathematicians in the room: That only raises $40 billion, which is a fraction of what this proposal would cost.”
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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is also drafting a sweeping $6 trillion piece of legislation, which folds in Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure-plus and $1.8 trillion social welfare outlines, as an alternative to the bipartisan arrangement. But the White House on Monday declined to endorse a measure that large, and it is not clear that centrist Democrats would back it. The party cannot lose one vote on a reconciliation bill.
The White House and Senate Democratic leaders could simply combine Biden’s two proposals into one measure, with a $4.1 trillion price tag.
Pending approval from the Senate parliamentarian, any bill moved on the fast-track process could clear the Senate with a simple majority — but only if Manchin and Sinema support it.
