After basically singlehandedly killing Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill, Senator Joe Manchin is still pretending like he might be open to supporting the ambitious spending package—just as long as pretty much all ambition is stripped from it in a version he gets to rewrite by himself.
Manchin spent months last year fighting with his party in what was very clearly bad faith negotiations on his part, insisting key tenets of the package needed to be removed (sorry, paid family leave), only to kill the bill in the end anyway.
During his State of the Union address this week, Biden brought up the key elements of the plan, indicating the plan was not dead but rebranding it as “building a better America.” Manchin immediately indicated to reporters that he wasn’t a fan of the idea (“I’ve never found out that you can lower costs by spending more,” he said) but also, in classic Manchin style, kept dangling that carrot.
Hours after President Joe Biden laid out what he hoped to salvage from Democrats’ defunct “Build Back Better” social spending plan, Joe Manchin quickly assembled a counteroffer. It might amount to deja vu for Democrats, many of whom still feel burned from last year’s debacle, yet many in the party are willing to entertain any shot they have to unify while they still have control of Congress.
“Here’s the thing. I’ve always been open to talking to people okay? But they just don’t want to hear,” Manchin said in a Wednesday interview.
For a guy who insists he’s “always been open to talking to people,” Manchin sure has a strange way of demonstrating that openness. Because according to HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney, rather than talk about details of a possible plan, Manchin chose to literally walk into oncoming traffic.
Manchin has put emphasis on fixing the tax code, but fellow Democratic obstructionist Kyrsten Sinema is staunchly opposed to increasing taxes for her wealthy donors. Delaney was asking Manchin about the issue when the senator cut him off, saying he’d “said enough today.”
The senator then proceeded to cross Constitution Avenue against a red light, with cars coming in both directions, leaving his friend, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), standing on the curb. I stayed back, too, and told Murkowski about the time last year I was trying to ask Manchin a question in this very spot when we started crossing against the light and I almost got run over. (Manchin warned me a car was coming.)
“That’s how we lose reporters,” Murkowski deadpanned.
Ah yes, the hallmark sign of a person willing to talk openly and honestly about policy: walking into traffic to avoid questions.
(via HuffPost, image: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
