Democrats are ‘playing whack-a-mole’ with Joe Manchin as they’re set to make hefty cuts and get Biden’s big bill over the finish line in 2022

• Democrats are likely poised to make grueling cuts to BBB to assuage Manchin's fiscal concerns.
• He took a swing at the child tax credit, since any future extensions jack up the cost of the bill.
• Democrats may only go big on a handful of childcare, education, and climate priorities in a new overhaul.

An enigmatic figure on Capitol Hill commanded the spotlight this week as he similarly did throughout the year, shuttling from one meeting to the next and getting pitched by Democrats scrambling to save their priorities on the Senate floor: Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a swing vote who holds the power to sink President Joe Biden's economic agenda with a thumbs-down.

Democrats started out with an initial $3.5 trillion package, but slashed their ambitions to satisfy the fiscal restraint of Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. The resulting $2 trillion bill that cleared the House after a lengthy stretch of infighting last month doesn't have their votes either.  

Despite their intense lobbying efforts, Democrats and the White House don't seem any closer to getting Manchin behind the safety net plan. Instead, he's only grown more publicly skeptical about its size and scope. He torpedoed efforts this week to swiftly pass the "Build Back Better" bill by Christmas with renewed concerns about keeping its pricetag locked in at $1.75 trillion over ten years. Now an acrimonious process many Democrats desperately wanted over will drag into the new year with no clear path to success.

Manchin's insistence to restrain fresh federal spending throws Democrats into the same position they were in early fall. Biden's spending bill will likely face the chopping block to ensure the cost of their plan doesn't crash through Manchin's self-imposed ceiling, forcing Democrats to go big on only a few new federal initiatives while ditching others.

"If you take Senator Manchin at his word — and I do — I assume what we're going to see is the wholesale elimination of some programs in order to focus on a handful of key priorities," Jim Manley, a former Senate Democratic leadership aide, told Insider. "$1.75 [trillion] appears to be fairly written in stone."

"I've never seen anything like it," Manley added. "One senator is trying to bend the Senate to his will."

'Every dollar needs to be spent effectively'

Democrats are likely to overhaul the House-approved bill next year. Biden effectively conceded it wasn't going to pass anytime soon on Thursday evening, suggesting in a statement that it may take "weeks" of more negotiations with the centrist holdout.

The legislation now stalled in the Senate would amount to the largest expansion of the American safety net in a generation. It would set up universal pre-K, renew monthly child tax credit payments to American families for another year, establish federal subsidies for childcare, combat the climate emergency and more.

It'll be a challenge for Democrats to reconfigure the bill to match Manchin's demands. To illustrate, a combination of the child tax credit, climate and environment provisions, and Obamacare subsidies would come in at $1.75 trillion. That would omit measures for childcare, affordable housing, and four weeks of paid sick leave. 

—Jordan Weissmann 🗽 (@JHWeissmann) December 17, 2021

The party's narrow House and Senate majorities sets up a bumpy path to final passage since no Democrat will want to see their cherished priority jettisoned.

"That's going to be hard obviously," Matt Bruenig, founder of the left-leaning People's Policy Project, told Insider. "It's going to piss a lot of people off if their thing doesn't get in."

Many of the programs are meant to expire, a tactic employed to keep the price tag low and attract moderate support. Both the affordable childcare and universal pre-K measures run only six years. Generous Affordable Care Act subsidies expire in 2025. The child tax credit extension would end late next year.

"Picking a dollar amount first and then trying to adjust all the policies to hit it, it's going to often run you into trouble," Bruenig said. "You start doing things that make the program very ineffective."

Manchin assailed that maneuver as "budget gimmicks" and "shell games" in early November. Then on Thursday evening, he told CNN's Manu Raju: "If you're gonna do something, let's do it, let's commit to it."

Democrats were betting a future Congress will be compelled to reauthorize temporary programs to avoid setting off a political firestorm. But policy experts argue that standing up initiatives with an end date undercuts their effectiveness at delivering meaningful benefits, weakening potential constituencies.

"This tendency towards creating temporary government provisions in the hope that they'll be extended later creates terrible uncertainty for program beneficiaries, huge fiscal uncertainty for the federal government, and usually ends up pushing up deficits," Brian Riedl, a budget expert at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, told Insider.

Some programs are designed so the federal government doesn't shoulder all the cost down the road. For universal pre-K, states would pick up the whole tab by 2028. The lack of permanent funding may compel many to shun it. "It's gotten to the place it will be expensive enough that you're going to see Democratic states passing on it," Claudia Sahm, an economist and fellow at the Jain Institute, told Insider.

Sahm argues Democrats should focus on "kids, care, and climate," adding, "every dollar needs to be spent effectively."

She is a proponent of the child tax credit, a new program enacted under the stimulus law that enjoys deep support among Congressional Democrats. The near-universal child benefit provides up to $300 per kid to families every month, regardless if they file taxes. It's helped families cover school and food expenses, and alleviated child poverty.

If she were handed the pen, Sahm said she would pour $585 billion from paid leave, childcare and universal pre-K towards extending the child tax credit for three more years, setting up a four-year extension. Bruenig also adopted the same approach.

"This made a real dent in child poverty as we were coming out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression," Sahm said. "That's exactly what you go after. Once you show the government works for people, it becomes harder to make the case that it can't."

Manchin has resisted the idea of sending monthly checks to families with no strings attached. The White House and Congress are poised to allow child tax credit checks to expire at the end of the month due to the delay in passing their spending bill. Not all benefit programs seem difficult to dislodge once they're in place, especially those with an expiration date.

Manley believes that any child tax credit extension taken up at the end of next year has less than a 50-50 shot at succeeding, given Republicans would need to cross party lines. "It's not a slam dunk," he said.

'Whiplash'

Manchin recently took a hard swing at the size and scope of the child tax credit. A person familiar with his thinking told Insider that its estimated $1.4 trillion cost over a 10-year span approached Manchin's redline on federal spending. 

Separately, the conservative Democrat has expressed resistance to a measure establishing four weeks of paid family and medical leave and expanding Medicare to cover hearing services.

Some Democratic aides said they were caught off guard by Manchin's latest demands. One aide compared it to "whiplash" since Manchin kept changing his positions and demands from one day to the next.

"The problems we're trying to solve in the Senate continue to change," one aide granted anonymity to speak candidly told Insider. "Once we solve them, then a new one comes up and it's sort of like playing whack-a-mole."

Democrats had hoped Manchin would fall in line and cut a deal so they could deliver Biden a fresh legislative victory  in addition to the $1.9 trillion stimulus package and the bipartisan infrastructure law passed earlier this year.  But their gambit backfired.

"He's been crystal clear for half a year on this," Riedl said, adding,"Democrats face a choice between half a loaf and nothing."

Many remain wary of contemplating painful cuts necessary to assuage Manchin.  "I'm not going to suggest there are parts that can be thrown overboard," Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachussetts said in a Thursday evening interview with Insider. "Everything in that bill has strong supporters on the Democratic side."

Whether their package comes to fruition will depend on Manchin giving it a thumbs-up — and it's not any clear how long it'll take for him to make up his mind.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont told Insider: "Sen. Manchin has stalled this thing, and stalled this thing, and stalled this thing."