It has been three weeks since Nancy Pelosi’s original deadline for a House infrastructure vote, and Democrats have yet to strike a deal. Progressives oppose moving forward with the Senate bill without guarantees on the more ambitious social infrastructure package, and that legislation is still too costly for conservatives Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Manchin has made his demands clearer more recently—progress!—but they’ve only made an agreement more uncertain: To satisfy Manchin, supposing he refused to budge from his current terms, Joe Biden would have to say goodbye to some of the most important provisions of his domestic agenda, from assisting working families to spurring the transition to renewable energy. That wouldn’t only piss off fellow Democrats, but would mean giving up what may be the party’s last, best chance to address the climate crisis and other era-defining issues.
Biden, then, has quite a challenge in front of him: To get Manchin on board without alienating the rest of his party, and without hamstringing his own plans, he will have to thread the needle in the coming days between the bold, necessary vision of his proposals and the unfortunate political realities of a divided Washington. Indeed, that a senator personally tied to the coal industry could single-handedly scuttle legislation to shift to clean energy is a sorry state of affairs. But, needing all 50 Democrats on board to do anything, Manchin does hold the leverage, and the president will need to find a way to make the West Virginia lawmaker happy to move the ball forward. The trick, though, will be making sure it doesn’t leave him with a bill unpalatable to the other 48 senators that were with him already.
It’s a tough problem, and one that Biden is expected to devote even more time to solving in the coming week before leaving the country for the G20 summit in Rome, followed by U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. “I’m not here to set new deadlines or timetables, but it is also true that we have been at this for some time,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday. “And we are at a point where we feel an urgency to move things forward.” Biden reportedly has a full-slate of “congressional time” on his calendar this week, seeking to break the stalemate in meetings with Manchin and Sinema—the latter of whom has been particularly coy about what she actually wants—and the progressive leaders who have pushed hard to get Biden’s agenda, or some version of it, enacted. The meetings with Manchin could be particularly consequential: The West Virginia senator has held firm at a $1.5 trillion price tag, and has implied a take-it-or-leave-it approach by dismissing the October 31 deadline Democrats are targeting for a deal. “I haven’t changed,” Manchin told reporters after meeting Monday with Bernie Sanders, with whom he’s been engaged in something of a feud of late. “I’ve been clear where I’m at.”
Getting Manchin to soften up a little bit and accept a package even in the $2 trillion range could bring about a bill both consequential and acceptable to the rest of the party, which can usher in at least some progress and continue the fight in other arenas. Sanders, who piqued his conservative colleague with an op-ed in his hometown West Virginia newspaper last week, expressed some optimism after a private meeting with him Monday. “I would hope that we’re going to see some real action within the next week or so,” Sanders told reporters after talking with Manchin. “We discussed the way forward.” What is that way? Democrats, eager to bridge the gap between Manchin and Sanders, hope they have a solution. As Senator Martin Heinrich told Politico: “It’s called Joe Biden.”
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