Joe Manchin Just Put the Build Back Better Act on Life Support – The New Republic

The bipartisan bill passed in the House in November, with Democratic leadership rallying most of their members to vote for the measure with the promise that the Build Back Better Act would also get support from moderates in both chambers. Only six progressive Democrats voted against the bipartisan bill, owing to skepticism about Manchins willingness to support the Build Back Better Actskepticism that now appears to have been justified.

Representative Cori Bush, one of the six progressives to vote against the bipartisan bill, said on MSNBC on Sunday morning that Manchins decision was not a huge surprise and that she was part of a group that had been saying for weeks this would happen.Representative Pramila Jayapal, who is chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus but voted for bipartisan bill, said in a statement on Sunday,Senator Joe Manchin made a promise to President Biden to support a framework that would help lower health care costs, cap the price of insulin and other prescription drugs, lower child care costs for Americans, address the climate crisis, and give working people and poor people a shot in America. Today, Senator Manchin has betrayed his commitment not only to the President and Democrats in Congress but most importantly, to the American people. He routinely touts that he is a man of his word, but he can no longer say that.

There were a few time-sensitive issues that Democrats had hoped to address by passing the Build Back Better Act as soon as possible. But with the Senate not voting on the bill until it returns to Washington in January, if it votes on the bill at all, this means the expanded child tax credit will expire at the end of the month. The credit, which had been enhanced by a March coronavirus relief measure, had been disbursed in monthly installments at a greater value. It also, for the first time, reached Americans too poor to file income taxes, who will now stop receiving the assistance in January. The program provided payments to more than 35 million American families with children and was expected to lift millions of children out of poverty. (Another provision in the House-passed Build Back Better Act was a four-year extension of a tax that funds a program to aid veteran coal miners disabled with black lung disease, which directly affects Manchins state of West Virginia.)

Manchin had long been skeptical of the child tax credit, which was extended for a year in the House version of the Build Back Better Act. In recent weeks, Manchin raised concerns that the credit, if extended for ten years, would cost roughly $1.5 trillion, and accused his colleagues of using budgetary gimmicks to make the cost of the bill appear lower. A Congressional Budget Office score requested by Republicans found that the Build Back Better Act would increase the deficit by $3 trillion over ten years, although Democrats argued that this did not take revenue raisers into account. (Tax cuts approved by Republicans in 2017 added $2 trillion to the deficit.)

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Joe Manchin Just Put the Build Back Better Act on Life Support - The New Republic