President Joe Biden’s CNN town hall on Thursday night was pitched as a venue for him to discuss and sell his ambitious social spending package to the viewing public. But his performance seemed crafted for an audience of two. Biden uses town hall to name-check Manchin and Sinema on agenda hold-ups:
Biden spent the first portion of the evening in Baltimore not only confirming the various concessions he is likely to make in order to pass his Build Back Better agenda. He also discussed in notable specifics the areas where he is finding disagreement with Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)
It was a change in approach, right as negotiations on the reconciliation package enter their 11th hour. The president has been working furiously behind the scenes to bring together a divided Democratic Party, meeting repeatedly with lawmakers from all corners of the left. On Thursday, he went public, placing a spotlight on the two main holdouts even as he downplayed disagreements and even praised their negotiating skills.
“Joe’s not a bad guy. He’s a friend,” he said of Manchin, while talking about the difficulty in coming to an agreement with him on expanding Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing benefits. “I think it’s a good idea. But here’s the thing. Mr. Manchin is opposed to that.”
“And I think Senator Sinema is, as well,” Biden said, adding that hearing benefits were important to the senator. The president said he believed he’d be able to address these issues without changing Medicare.
Biden also called Sinema “smart as the devil” and “very supportive of the environmental agenda in my legislation.” But, he hastened to add, “she will not raise a single penny on taxes for the corporate side and or on wealthy people.”
After the fact, a White House aide clarified: “The President was referring to the challenge of having the votes to move forward on raising the corporate rate, not to the ability to raise revenue through a range of other tax fairness proposals which Senator Sinema supports.”
The remarks nevertheless effectively placed the two senators at center stage. And they suggest that the White House is still having difficulty coming to final agreements on key items and might be eager to see Democratic voters intensify the pressure campaigns on them to get on board.
Biden name-checked the West Virginia senator again when asked about the clean energy protection program, another component Manchin has opposed, before laying out alternatives for gaining his support.
“Joe Manchin’s argument is, ‘Look, we still have coal in my state, you’re going to eliminate it eventually, we know it’s going away, we know it’s going to be gone, but don’t rush it so fast that my people don’t have anything to do,’” the president said. “I think that’s not what we should be doing. But the fact of the matter is we can take that 150 billion, add it to the 320 billion that’s in the law now that he’s prepared to support for tax incentives.”
But Biden emphasized that no concessions had been made for Manchin to have coal in his state. “Nothing has been formally agreed to,” he said.
Biden said that negotiators had only four or five items left on which they had disagreements. He also outlined the compromises that had been reached to get to this point. A paid-leave provision would be reduced in size to four weeks, and the final deal would not include funding for tuition-free community college.
“I do think I’ll get a deal,” he said of his sweeping economic package, adding that he thought the negotiations were close to wrapping.
“Look, I was a senator for 370 years,” Biden said, drawing laughter. “I was … relatively good at putting together deals.”
[At] other points in the town hall, he spoke about his eagerness to move forward on other legislative topics like police reform and voting rights. And he conceded that he couldn’t embrace filibuster reform now, not because of philosophical opposition to it but because it would complicate his legislative agenda.
“If, in fact, I get myself into at this moment the debate on the filibuster, I lose at least three votes right to get what I have to get done on the economic side of the equation,” he said.
Biden later hinted that he would embrace rules reform in the Senate on items like raising the debt ceiling and, potentially, voting rights legislation if they didn’t move through the chamber.
“When it comes to voting rights, just so I’m clear, though, you would entertain the notion of doing away with the filibuster on that one issue, is that correct?” host Anderson Cooper asked.
“And maybe more,” Biden said.
On this last point, the New York Times adds, Biden Is Open to Scrapping Filibuster for Voting Rights Bill ‘and Maybe More’:
President Biden said on Thursday that he was open to ending the Senate filibuster so Democrats could pass voting rights legislation, raise the federal debt limit and possibly enact other parts of his agenda that had been blocked by Republicans.
Mr. Biden had previously said that changing the filibuster rules to allow a debt limit vote was “a real possibility,” but his remarks on Thursday evening suggested that he was ready to pursue broader changes to bypass Republican opposition.
About damn time!
[But] he said ending the filibuster — a Senate tradition that allows the minority party to kill legislation that fails to garner 60 votes — would have to wait until after he secured passage of his spending bills, which are under negotiation on Capitol Hill.
The president said he would lose “at least three votes” on his social policy bill if he pushed an end to the filibuster. He did not say which senators he would lose. [Oh, we know who.]
Mr. Biden was blunt about his intentions once the debate over the spending bills was over. He said the need to pass sweeping voting rights legislation favored by Democrats is “equally as consequential” as the debt limit vote, which protects the full faith and credit of the United States.
Asked by Anderson Cooper, the host of the event, whether that meant he would be open to ending the use of the filibuster so that Democrats could pass a voting rights bill, Mr. Biden said, “and maybe more.”
The president said that activists who are pushing to end the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation “make a very good point,” adding, “We’re going to have to move to the point where we fundamentally alter the filibuster.”
[S]ome Democrats have urged the president to push for modifications to the filibuster so that he can pass an immigration overhaul, address prison reform and enact more ambitious climate change legislation. If the filibuster remains intact, they argue, Mr. Biden will leave office with half his priorities unmet.
[Mr.] Biden’s comments on Thursday are likely to give Democratic activists some renewed hope that he will take on the filibuster. He also said he supported the idea of bringing back a rule that would require senators to conduct a filibuster by actually speaking and automatically ending the procedure once two senators have given their speeches.
Sen. Joe Manchin was publicly humiliated this week when not one Republican – not even Sen. Lisa Murkowski who had joined him in his quest for bipartisan voting rights reforms – voted for his scaled-down The Right to Vote Act. Republicans are against democracy, Joe. Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman explain, Republicans have given Joe Manchin the perfect reason to end the filibuster:
On Wednesday, all 50 Republicans in the Senate — including supposed moderates such as Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — voted to filibuster the Freedom to Vote Act. That’s a stripped-down version of sweeping voting rights legislation Democrats have advocated.
If Manchin (or anyone else) needed more proof that Republicans will never partner with Democrats to secure voting rights and democracy, this was it.
The Freedom to Vote Act was, for all intents and purposes, Manchin’s own bill. He demanded the changes that made it less ambitious than the For the People Act championed by progressives.
No Republican voted for his bill.
Manchin is committed to voting rights legislation. He’s also committed to the idea that it must be bipartisan. What will Manchin do with what Republicans themselves have told him about the prospects for said bipartisanship?
Manchin has a way forward here that does not entail listening to liberals. Instead, it entails listening to a pair of moderates. One is an independent, and the other is a Democrat from a state nearly as red as Manchin’s.
It has mostly escaped notice, but these two senators — Angus King of Maine and Jon Tester of Montana — have moved a substantial distance toward filibuster reform. And voting rights — combined with the relentless Republican refusal to support new protections, even as Republicans in states pass voting restrictions everywhere — made them do it.
Sen. King is now open to filibuster reform — for the sake of protecting democracy. “I’ve concluded that democracy itself is more important than any Senate rule,” he now says. He favors some kind of rules change that would allow voting rights legislation to pass by simple majority.
Tester, meanwhile, comes from a deep-red state. He has defended the filibuster in the past. But after the Freedom to Vote Act fell to a GOP filibuster, he told reporters he was reconsidering a change to the rules. As Tester framed the choice: “In the end, it is going to come down to getting Republicans or restoring order.”
[T]hey take the position they do because they believe the right to vote is fundamental — and because the filibuster has become an affront to majority rule in a way that, perversely, is allowing Republicans to continue entrenching minority rule.
Indeed, despite being from a deep-red state, Tester alludes to this. He points out that he would prefer a bipartisan solution, but that Republicans are already acting on voting rights — acting against voting rights, that is — and are doing so on a partisan basis themselves. He points out that the American people want the Senate to work, and want their rights protected.
Manchin surely agrees with much of this. He agrees that a working Senate requires good-faith bipartisanship, which Republicans have not shown. He agrees the Senate should function, and that voting rights must be protected. Yet Republicans are not allowing the Senate to function — in a way that enables their state-level counterparts to continue shredding those rights.
As early as next week, Democrats will hold a vote on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore preclearance protections for voting rules that the Supreme Court has repeatedly gutted. Republicans will filibuster that, too.
What then?
Here is the bottom line: Manchin wants fortified protections for democracy, yet he says protecting democracy must be bipartisan by definition. Yet Republicans have made their statement: No bipartisan support for protecting democracy will ever be forthcoming.
The question Manchin must answer — definitively, at some point — is whether this means it can never happen at all.
All he has to do is listen to what Republicans are telling him.
Ditto for Sen. Kysten Sinema.
The Politico Playbook reports on the status of budget negotiations as of this morning:
RECONCILIATION RUNDOWN — Taking questions at a live town hall in Baltimore, Biden got into the nitty-gritty of the reconciliation negotiations, speaking about his mix of frustration with and respect for Sens. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) and KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-Ariz.) with surprising candor. He also made some news about the particulars of the bill/framework at this point in time:
-
-
- IN, BUT REDUCED: paid family medical leave. “It is down to four weeks,” said Biden. “We can’t get 12 weeks.”
- IN, DETAILS TBD: child tax credit. Biden announced his opposition to a work requirement, despite Manchin’s support of one, and stated that middle-class families will not have to pay more than 7% of their income on child care.
- LIKELY OUT: Medicare coverage of dental, vision and hearing.Biden said he believed that Manchinema opposes its inclusion. As a compromise, he suggested an $800 voucher for dental care.
- SOUNDS LIKE IT’S OUT: tax increases on corporations and wealthy Americans. He pinned some of the blame on Sinema. “She will not raise a single penny in taxes on the corporate side and/or on wealthy people, period,” Biden said. “And so that’s where it sort of breaks down.”
- OUT: tuition-free community college. Biden cited opposition from Manchin “and one other person” (cough, Sinema, cough) as the reason why. Still, he vowed to “get it done,” perhaps by expanding Pell Grants. “I guarantee you: We’re going to get free community college in the next several years,” he said. More from CNN … WaPo … Myah Ward and Sam Stein run down the Biden-Manchinema comments
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Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, our Sarah Ferris, Marianne LeVine and Nicholas Wu have a helpful readout of the state of play.
— On the areas of agreement: On Thursday, Sinema “spoke for roughly a half hour with Ways and Committee Chair RICHARD NEAL (D-Mass.), who is a major player on tax issues in the bill. ‘We were in full agreement on the policy achievement, and she’s in on renewables, she’s in on the issue of child credit, and she’s in on family medical leave, and that’s the way she ranked them,’ Neal said, adding he planned to speak to Manchin later.”
Sinema has also agreed to provisions “in each of President Biden’s four proposed revenue categories — international, domestic corporate, high net worth individuals, and tax enforcement — providing sufficient revenue to fully pay for a budget reconciliation package in the range currently being discussed,” per a source familiar.
— … and the disagreements that remain: “Some of the largest remaining obstacles include paid leave, Medicare expansion, prescription drug pricing and climate, according to Democrats familiar with the discussions — all issues that risk alienating key factions of the party.”
And all of this movement came about in the aftermath of a tangle between Manchin and Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.) at a meeting of Senate Dems on Monday. Burgess Everett and Marianne have the details, starting with Manchin telling Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER’s team that he was willing to accept universal pre-K but not tuition-free community college — prompting a vocal rebuke from Sanders:
“‘Bullshit,’ Sanders said, according to a readout of the meeting provided to POLITICO. Sanders said Manchin was telling the rest of the Democratic caucus to go ‘F themselves’ and bend to one senator’s agenda. Manchin disputed that, recounting that he’d told Biden the president did not win West Virginia and his very presence in the Senate is remarkable. [Somebody is suffering from a God complex.]
“Shortly after that tussle, Manchin and Sanders met privately, posed for a photo together and publicly reconciled. They’ve met four times so far this week, each softening their rhetoric toward one another and speaking more hopefully of a deal even as they continue to spar behind the scenes. Yet the cathartic blowup helped spark a significant breakthrough after a days-long feud between the two that began when Sanders leaned publicly on Manchin to support Biden’s agenda.”
The deadline for this reconciliation package currently remains October 31. By this time next week we will know one way or the other. We need to move on to voting rights, and the federal debt ceiling by December 3.
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This reminds me of the Affordable Care Act and the fight to include the public option that was passed by the House. Progressives lost, obviously, and there is still no public option.
Manchin doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Medicare insolvency. If he did, he would want Medicare negotiating ALL drug prices like the VA. That would free up plenty of money for dental, hearing, and vision benefits as well as other things.
Bernie Sanders has fought long and hard for a better healthcare system, progressives have already compromised on everything, and now the paid off DINOs won’t allow some of the most essential healthcare benefits for people over 65.
TheHill.com
Sanders draws red lines on Medicare expansion, drug pricing plan in spending bill
BY JORDAIN CARNEY – 10/26/21 11:22 AM EDT 5,392
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on Tuesday that a deal on President Biden’s spending bill must expand Medicare and include a plan to lower the cost of prescription drugs.
Sanders warned in a tweet over the weekend that the Medicare expansion provision couldn’t be dropped. But Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), speaking to reporters on Monday, reiterated he doesn’t support expanding Medicare amid concerns about the program’s solvency.
In addition to potentially dropping Sanders’s plan to expand the benefits covered by Medicare, negotiators are discussing limiting Medicare’s power to negotiate lower prices for only a handful of drugs, instead of the broad spectrum of medications that Sanders wanted covered.
The broader plan is opposed by a group of moderates, including Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/578468-sanders-serious-spending-bill-must-include-medicare-expansion-drug-pricing
“LIKELY OUT: Medicare coverage of dental, vision and hearing. Biden said he believed that Manchinema opposes its inclusion.”
This is because Medicare Advantage plans which are sold by insurance companies are highly profitable, and their share of the market is steadily increasing. Almost all Medicare Advantage plans already include dental, vision and hearing benefits.
Original Medicare or Original Medicare plus a supplement are the other choices people have (Part D for prescription drugs is separate.) Insurance companies are opposed to the expansion of original Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision because they’re afraid their share of the market will shrink or stop growing. Original Medicare and supplement policies do not have networks or referrals. Medicare Advantage has these restrictions and they’re famous for claim denials. They are certainly going to be less attractive if Original Medicare starts providing dental, vision, and hearing benefits.
The Better Medicare Alliance “advocates” for Medicare Advantage insurers and they’re the ones running pro-Sinema ads on TV, the one I’ve seen says to call Senator Sinema and thank her for taking care of seniors.
But Sinema has already cashed the checks so LIKELY OUT probably means OUT.
Don Winslow
@donwinslow
Here’s just a partial list of what Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have successfully STOPPED.
100% clean energy by 2035
Home care for the elderly and disabled
Free community college
Lower prescription drug costs
Higher taxes on corporations and millionaires.
3:20 AM · Oct 24, 2021·Twitter Web App
The Wall Street Journal had a different take on the town hall. They opined, “One big problem is that Mr. Biden often doesn’t seem to know what he’s talking about. Take rising gas prices that are a growing public concern. Mr. Biden blamed the OPEC cartel for not producing more oil, but then he said the answer is “ultimately . . . investing in renewable energy.” Most cars still run on gasoline, not solar or wind power. Electric cars remain impractical for most Americans. The way to reduce gas prices is to produce more oil to increase the supply. Mr. Biden wouldn’t have to plead with OPEC to produce more if he weren’t working so hard to limit U.S. oil production.”
The WSJ went on to mention Biden’s lack of comprehension on the supply chain issue, “How about the supply-chain bottlenecks contributing to shortages and inflation? Mr. Biden blamed Covid and employers who won’t pay enough to attract workers. But employers are bidding up wages nearly across the economy and they still can’t fill the more than 10 million job openings nationwide.”
Then President Biden forgot that he cannot call up the state National Guard. They noted, “Asked if he’d call in the National Guard to address the shortage of truckers, Mr. Biden said he would. But the deployment of the Guard is actually controlled by Governors, as the White House later clarified.”
The WSJ ended with Biden’s most confusing and embarrassing moment. To wit, “Mr. Biden’s confusion extended to foreign policy, which is supposed to be his strength. Regarding Taiwan—a crucial issue with China—Mr. Biden misstated U.S. policy. Asked “can you vow to protect Taiwan,” Mr. Biden said “yes…’’ Apparently not, because the White House soon walked back Mr. Biden’s words.”
I am not sure how AZBlueMeanie missed this depressing aspect of the president’s town hall appearance. However, I think we all need to start worrying about his mental state. I find it amazing that the liberal media was overflowing with psychiatrist and psychologist willing to negatively diagnosed Donald Trump before and after his election without even examining him but now that there’s a president in place whom they support, their interest in commenting on his mental health vanishes, much like Biden’s memory.
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News propaganda in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal is hardly a reliable source. If you want to “start worrying about the mental state” of someone, it should be your “Dear Leader” Donald Trump who is a sociopath with narcissistic personality disorder, and a sadistic pathological liar. And you should be worried about your own mental state for blindly following such a vile individual in the personality cult of Donald Trump. Check out a good cult deprogrammer.
@Rep Kavanagh – Does Rupert Murdoch still own WSJ? If so, it’s not a credible journalistic source.
The Wall Street Journal did not make up all of those Biden flubs. They were there for the few people who actually watch the town hall to see. You cannot ignore the reality of President Biden’s mental decline by simply trying to discredit the Wall Street Journal. Biden is being handled and rarely makes public appearances where reporters can ask him questions and then follow-ups. All past presidents have done that. It is obvious why Biden’s handlers will not expose him to that. You can ignore this all you want but as the months go by, it will become more and more apparent until there are public calls for him to step down because his lack of mental acuity is jeopardizing the security of this country. Sad but true.
At a rally in Buffalo Trump told the crowd, “I wrote this out, and it’s very close to my heart. Because I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen down at 7/11…
Trump said, “May God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo” … the shooting was in Dayton…
Trump told reporters, “I hope they now go and take a look at the oranges, the oranges of the investigation, the beginnings of that investigation.”…
Trump seriously inflated the amount of testing for coronavirus that was taking place in the United States — where, he told reporters, Americans were getting “one million eight hundred and seventy thousand million tests.”….
“If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value,” Trump told Republicans “And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one.”…
Wanted to buy Greenland.
Said “I am the chosen one” and looked up to heaven.
“We can have a lot of fun tonight. I have nothing to do. Nothing. Nothing,” he told a South Carolina crowd in July. He repeated the same comment at the Michigan Christmas rally last week….
“How about the word ‘caravan?’ Caravan? I think that was one of mine,” he said in February in El Paso, Texas.
Stared into the sun during an eclipse.
Trump ad-libs that “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more…
Said “Nobody knew healthcare would be so complicated”….
Trump claimed that “if you go out and buy groceries, you need a picture on a card—you need ID.”
Please don’t make me go on, Phony John Kavanagh, you said nothing while Trump lied and gaffed daily.
Forget it Jake…The obvious signs of the Vulgar Talking Yam’s mental decline (or perhaps lifelong stupidity) are taken by those right wing cultists as their equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount.
Some irony in my sway-duh-nim typos, given the subject matter, I may need to get checked myself. Or learn to type slower. 🙂
Biden’s mental decline? You’re ascribing a mental condition to Biden that is overwhelmingly applicable to The Former Guy. Honestly Johnny, do you actually believe the crap you put into your keyboard? If so you are the one experiencing not just a mental decline but a pretty severe one. Also known as Right Wing Media Brain Rot.
Excellent report. The US Senate is digging American democracy into a very deep pit from which we may not be able to escape.
America now has a King and a Queen. And a failing President. And a failing government.
All because of corrupt 1%ers money in politics approved by a Supreme Court controlled by 1%ers and their corporate mindset AND because of the United States Senate’s belief in one senator’s Right to stop a Nation of 330 million people and a world of 7.9 billion by just saying NO.
Biden has not learned from LBJ. In a world of corrupt politics at times one must play hard ball with hard heads. Biden must take Sinema and Manchin to the wood shed.
Senators you have a choice. You can loose your next elections or not even become candidates for re-election in 2024, regardless of whether you are a Republican or a Democrat OR you can vote to abolish the filibuster.
A working democracy is far more important to America and the world than a self appointed King and Queen.
AZBlue, thanks again for your comprehensive reporting on BBB and the Sinema-Manchin Problem.
It must be exhausting.
I can’t even say how worried I am about Bernie Sanders, and also Joe Biden to a lesser extent. Biden seems to be holding up fairly well. But these are old men, and it’s worrisome.