So what’s the state of negotiations between the White House and JOE MANCHIN and KYRSTEN SINEMA?
The talks have been shrouded in mystery, but we have some fresh details we can share this morning.
More is known about Manchin than Sinema, and for a good reason: While Manchin has been willing to discuss his priorities in detail with his colleagues in the Senate, Sinema only negotiates with the White House.
“I’m not going to share with you or with Schumer or with Pelosi,” she told one Democratic senator recently. “I have already told the White House what I am willing to do and what I’m not willing to do. I’m not mysterious. It’s not that I can’t make up my mind. I communicated it to them in detail. They just don’t like what they’re hearing.”
Part of solving the Manchinema puzzle is that the 74-year-old former governor from a coal state and the 45-year-old former Green Party activist from Arizona are at odds on some major policies.
“Manchin and Sinema want very different things, both in terms of revenue and programs,” said a source close to Biden who spent the last few days talking to senior White House officials. “If you just took their currently presented red lines you wouldn’t have enough left to get this past progressives in the House and Senate. It wouldn’t raise enough money and it wouldn’t do enough big programs.”
The biggest obstacle Sinema has created, according to Democrats, is on prescription drug pricing reform.
The most robust version of this plan to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices would bring in some $800 billion of revenue at the expense of the pharmaceutical industry. It’s one of the most popular policies on the Democrats’ menu of options and many party strategists believe Democrats owe their House majority to this issue.
But we’re told that Democrats would be lucky if they managed to convince Sinema to support a version of drug pricing reform that raises even $200 billion. That’s not enough to fund the expansion of Medicare benefits that Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.) wants or the expansion of the ACA that Speaker NANCY PELOSI wants.
Manchin is much more willing to support a bolder version of drug pricing reform. But he’s also insisting on including his own pet plan to tax prescription opioids — a tax vehemently opposed by Sinema’s allies at PhRMA and one that would dilute the Democrats’s prescription drug pricing plan. So far, the White House has not been able to convince Manchin to drop his opioid tax idea.
The two senators are similarly at odds over climate policy: Manchin opposes several Democratic ideas to price carbon pollution, while Sinema favors them.
And here’s where Manchin is really driving his colleagues crazy. There are tens of thousands of coal jobs in West Virginia that are going to disappear as the economy transitions to clean energy. But when Democrats have proposed expensive programs to subsidize those workers’ income as they find new jobs, Manchin, we’re told, “rejected it out of hand,” calling the idea “welfare.”
“So, like where the hell is the overlap?” the source close to Biden said of the “maddening” policy gap between the two centrists. “How do you land that?”
Some other reconciliation tidbits from this source:
— While progressives and many senior Democrats have been under the impression that the White House is interested in more programs that sunset, with shorter funding periods, this person indicated that Biden may actually favor fewer programs done well, news Pelosi will welcome. “They are coming down on the side of ‘choose programs that really have an impact on families and people’s lives and that can be executed well,’” said the source close to Biden.
— At least one of the five major climate provisions currently being discussed — tax rebates for clean energy, the Clean Electricity Performance Program, a price on carbon, a carbon border tax, a Civilian Climate Corps — is likely to be nixed. “Everything I hear from Manchin is that he wants to kill the CEPP,” said the same source. “If that’s the hostage, can we get 3 or 4 of the others?”
— On child care proposals, top Democrats are discussing making a choice between Biden’s universal free pre-K plan and his plan to subsidize high quality daycare.
— The path to getting the total bill to above $2 trillion may require dedicating $100-200 billion to paying down the debt, a priority that both Manchin and Sinema actually agree on.
This is one source who probably has an agenda so you can take it with a grain of salt. There are many moving parts to all this. But honestly, these two people are a blight on America. The sheer arrogance of them defying the entire caucus and the president, potentially causing a huge rift in the the coalition we need if we’re going to fight back fascism is just too much to take.
Talk about fiddling while Rome burns …