It’s not good enough to blame Joe Manchin for failures when Biden isn’t using the full scope of presidential powers to help ordinary Americans
When Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator, announced on Sunday he could not support Joe Biden’s $2.2tn Build Back Better legislation, it marked the end of at least one era. Biden and other Senate Democrats had spent most of 2021 trying to get Manchin, a conservative Democrat, to vote for a bill that would dramatically bolster the social safety net, combat climate change and raise taxes on corporations.
Manchin has not budged from his central concern—that the spending is too much, inflation is too high, and the national debt will loom ever larger. He is wrong to oppose the legislation, but it’s clear negotiations will only go so far. In a 50-50 Senate, the margin for error is almost nonexistent, and Manchin represents a state Donald Trump won comfortably in 2016 and 2020. Democrats of all ideologies have little leverage over him.
Ross Barkan is a writer based in New York City
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