Sen. Joe Manchin III said Tuesday that President Biden’s $1.75 trillion social welfare and climate change bill is “dead” in its current iteration.
Mr. Manchin, West Virginia Democrat and a key swing vote in the evenly divided Senate, was asked whether Mr. Biden’s Build Back Better Act could pass in a streamlined form.
“What Build Back Better bill?” said Mr. Manchin. “There isn’t one. I don’t know what you all are talking about.”
When pressed if the White House had attempted to renew negotiations on the topic, Mr. Manchin said there had been no developments.
“It’s dead,” he said, adding that he was always open to discussions with anyone.
“If we’re talking about the whole big package, that’s gone,” the centrist Democrat said. “We’ll see what people come up with.”
His comments are the latest signal that Democrats face an uphill battle in trying to revive the package after Mr. Manchin single-handedly killed it last year.
Given solid GOP opposition, the only hope Democrats had for passage was using a party-line procedure known as budget reconciliation. The process allows some tax and spending measures to avert the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold and pass with a simple majority.
Party unity proved impossible when Mr. Manchin signaled his opposition, citing concerns the bill relied too heavily on budget gimmicks and would exacerbate inflation.
“Despite my best efforts, I cannot explain the sweeping Build Back Better Act in West Virginia and I cannot vote to move forward on this mammoth piece of legislation,” Mr. Manchin said in December.
Since then, Democratic and White House officials have pledged to continue lobbying Mr. Manchin to support some version of the package, even if it’s slimmed down or broken up into different pieces.
“We should start having standalone votes on things that are easy to explain,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, Virginia Democrat.
• Haris Alic can be reached at halic@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.