Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who’s found relevance by being an asshole who won’t let us have anything nice, has reset the goalposts for President Joe Biden and fellow Democrats again. Now he’s saying he might agree to some of the provisions from the big Build Back Better (BBB) project he torpedoed back in December. That is, if Democrats decide the emphasis should not be on helping people survive and eventually recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout, but on reducing the budget deficit.
So as not to be the only person responsible for making the lives of lower income Americans miserable, Manchin is trying to deflect the onus of doing something, anything, on fellow problem child Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. “Why can’t we just get a good solid tax plan that works?” He asked rhetorically last week in a Wall Street Journal interview. “That’s the first thing to do.” He is proposing a hike in the corporate tax rate from 21% to 25%, raising the capital gains rate from 23.8% to 28%, and increased taxes on carried interest income of private equity managers.
Those were all things originally included in the proposal to pay for BBB. They were nixed last fall by Sinema. At least that’s what she told lobbyists at the time. “I respect [Sinema] and what her concerns may be, but I think basically our financial situation is getting worse, not better, so maybe we can take another look at it,” Manchin told The Wall Street Journal. “I would hope so.”
When asked for comment, Sinema of course didn’t do so, but said through a spokesperson that she would deign to consider proposals that could create jobs and potentially help people. “There are many ways to pay for such ideas that do not include tax-rate increases that hurt small businesses and our economic competitiveness while we continue to emerge from a pandemic and economic downturn,” the spokesman said.
So, no, she’s not really going to budge on the tax issue that her new Republican megadonor friends oppose.
It could be possible that Manchin is making this offer of support for real, that he really does want to see taxes made more fair and supports some parts of BBB—including the $500 billion in climate change mitigation (where he’s still a bit squishy). The White House and Democrats are taking him at his word, anyway.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden of Oregon told The Washington Post last week that they are looking at a package that would include the Affordable Care Act expansion, some prescription drug reform, the climate change provisions, and the tax reform that Manchin has talked up. “It is my opinion there is growing interest in this,” Wyden said. “I know [Manchin] has been very interested in deficit reduction … We’re in a position, if Senate Democrats go that route, to have a list of items that can pay for any number of initiatives and also get the deficit reduction he talked about today.”
It could be real, this push from Manchin and his entreaty to Sinema for her to join him. Or it could be a continuation of the game they’ve been playing since last summer. What started as a $6 trillion jobs, economic equality, tax the rich, and climate change plan got whittled down to $3.5 trillion, largely because of their opposition. Then it was chopped down again to $1.75 trillion while Democrats played whack-a-mole with these two and the conservative Democratic House counterparts they were egging on.
When one made a demand that was satisfied, the other would pop up with another, entirely separate demand, dragging the process out and singlehandedly fanning the flames of “Dems in disarray” reporting.
It’s easy for Manchin to say “tax the rich” here when he knows Sinema isn’t going to let it happen. And when he knows the all of his corporate lobbyist friends are in on the act and aren’t going to punish him for it.
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