From Salon:
After days of rumors swirling among reporters on Capitol Hill, President Joe Biden confirmed it late Thursday evening: The Build Back Better plan is not going to pass this year. Which almost certainly means that the timeline for passing it is never.
Biden, of course, denied that “never” is in the cards. Instead, he released a statement to reporters, claiming, “My team and I are having ongoing discussions” with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), the primary holdout stopping Democrats from passing the bill through the Senate. “Leader Schumer and I are determined to see the bill successfully on the floor as early as possible,” Biden insisted.
Still, there’s good reason for skepticism.
As I note in Friday’s Standing Room Only newsletter, the past 11 months have made it impossible to believe that Manchin is negotiating in good faith. Instead, every move Manchin makes suggests that his plan is what skeptics thought it was all along: pull out the few items that he and his rich benefactors approve of to pass through a slim bipartisan bill, and then doom the larger Build Back Better plan by wasting time with fake objections until Republicans retake Congress and permanently destroy it. Manchin explodes with hair-trigger defensiveness at even the mildest question that reminds him his “support” for the policies in Build Back Better is a big, fat lie. This is not the behavior of a man who actually intends to vote for a bill he keeps swearing he’s one more tweak away from supporting.
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