“I’d been ostracized and victimized, if you will, because I killed the BBB.” Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said that on Thursday during an interview on the state radio show “Talkline with Hoppy Kercheval.” He was talking about the Build Back Better Act, and he made clear he still would not back any version of it.
“The BBB, I think, was just a bad deal for our economy,” Manchin told Kercheval. “It’s a bad deal for our country and changes the trajectory of who we are as a people. So I was totally opposed to that.”
The replacement deal
The interview came a day after Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer surprised Washington by releasing an agreement on a new bill, the Inflation Reduction Act. Business Insider described it as a trimmed-down version of Biden’s economic plans, reached after secret, high-level talks. It sets aside $370 billion for climate and energy and aims for a cut of 40% in US emissions by 2030.
Manchin said the legislation is “truly going to be around inflation reduction.” He had his staff go over the text closely. “I told my staff to start scrubbing this bill down,” he said. “There can’t be one thing, as you can say, that will cause inflation.”
Republicans should not worry, Manchin argued, since the bill would help boost revenue. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saw it differently and slammed the deal, claiming it would cause “giant tax hikes.” The bill itself says it would not raise taxes on households making less than $400,000 per year.
Keeping Biden out
President Joe Biden took no part in the talks between Manchin and Schumer. That was deliberate. “I was not going to bring the president in,” Manchin said, adding that the deal might “not have happened at all if he did.” In his words: “It could have absolutely gone sideways.”
Manchin also addressed the political risk to himself. If he could pass an energy policy that worked without raising taxes or adding to inflation, he said, and still walked away because it might hurt him politically, “then, I’m the wrong person to be where I’m at.”
He told Politico on Wednesday that he cut the deal with Schumer because Democrats might lose the House in the midterms. “We don’t know what the future will bring,” he said.
The Senate and House still had to vote on the bill. Biden said he would sign it if it reached his desk.
