Biden Spending Plan Is “Dead.” Do Dems Have a Plan B?

DC: U.S. Capitol, Senator Manchin Speaks to Media
Sipa USA
By Yuval Rosenberg

Good evening. We hope you had a meaningful Martin
Luther King, Jr. Day. Voting rights and the filibuster continue to
be the focus in Congress this week, as Senate Democrats look to
force a showdown over legislation that combines two bills already
passed by the House, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis
Voting Rights Advancement Act. The Democratic efforts appear doomed
— though Democrats are reportedly exploring
procedural options for bypassing GOP opposition.
It should make for an interesting week, but it may all just set up
yet another news cycle dominated by stories of Democrats failing to
overcome intraparty divides.

Shocking, we know.

Build Back Better Is "Dead." What’s Democrats’
Plan B?

The White House shot down a report Tuesday that it is working on
a scaled back version of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better
plan that aims to salvage climate change measures while cutting
programs including the child tax credit and paid family leave.


Reuters reported Tuesday morning that the Biden
administration is looking to "reset" talks with lawmakers as it
tries to rescue elements of the president’s stalled bill. A
slimmed-down version of the plan would likely include more than $1
trillion in new spending, Reuters’ Andrea Shalal and Jarrett
Renshaw reported, but it could pare back or completely scrap
proposals to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in programs
like paid family leave, universal pre-kindergarten and home health
care. The White House and Democrats are also reportedly considering
setting lower income caps for the child tax credit and other
programs.

Reuters added that the White House is looking to shape the plan
to accommodate the demands of Sen. Joe Manchin, the centrist West
Virginia Democrat who effectively scuttled the House version of the
bill last month by announcing he couldn’t support it. In an evenly
divided Senate, and with Republicans uniformly opposed to the Biden
plan, Democrats need Manchin’s vote — and that of every other
member of their caucus.

"There's not a lot of mystery anymore about what Manchin would
accept," one unnamed source reported to be working on the revised
plan told Reuters. "We need to calibrate as much as possible to
what he can accept, and then there needs to be a personal ask (by
Biden) for his vote."

The White House calls the report "wrong": White House
spokesman Andrew Bates quickly denied the Reuters report, per

The Hill. "Reuters is wrong," Bates said in a
statement. "We are always in touch with members about this, and the
substance and details of this report are off-base."

Will breaking up BBB be Democrats’ Plan B? Sen. Tim Kaine
(D-VA) acknowledged Sunday in an appearance on CBS’s "Face the
Nation" that the most recent version of the Build Back Better
package is "dead," but he argued that Democrats could still salvage
the main pieces of the package.

"The most recent version of it is not going to happen, but if
you look at the core of the bill, I think the core is education and
workforce and things like reduced child care and education
expenses, workforce training and then support for the workforce in
areas like health care," he said. "There are other pieces of the
bill that are more controversial. I still believe we're going to
find a core of this bill, whatever we call it, we're going to find
the core of the bill and pass it, and it will deal directly with
some of these inflation concerns."

Some House Democrats running for re-election in swing districts
have been pushing party leaders to break up the massive spending
bill and instead hold a series of votes on popular provisions —
even if those separate pieces can’t pass. The Washington Posts’
Marianna Sotomayor
reports:

"These members have argued to top House leaders in recent days
— so far, to no avail — that holding votes on narrow measures such
as curbing prescription drug costs and extending the child tax
credit would help Democrats make a case that they can improve
voters’ lives economically despite soaring inflation and other
issues that have dragged down Biden’s approval ratings. …
"Members believe it is entirely possible to strip out the
prescription drug and the child tax credit provisions and pass them
as stand-alone bills because some Senate Republicans have
previously expressed supporting reforms. However, there has not
been any formal outreach to Republicans for a bipartisan path
forward and no guarantee that the necessary 10 would support these
policies."

Democrats including Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA) reportedly pushed
back at a meeting earlier this month when House Majority Leader
Steny Hoyer (D-MD) argued against abandoning the larger package,
which he said still had a chance of passing. "If there is still
hope for Manchin to agree, we need to figure out when that’s going
to be and what we are doing if he doesn’t meet that deadline
because in the past, he hasn’t. What’s our next plan?" Wild told
the Post.

Sotomayor reports that another group of "front-liners" running
in competitive districts is looking to move on, emphasizing the
bipartisan infrastructure plan passed last year and other
legislative accomplishments instead of getting bogged down by in
the Build Back Better quagmire.

The bottom line: Democrats will be circling back to Build
Back Better after this week’s voting rights push, but it’s still
not clear how they want to approach the package and if they can
coalesce around a strategy for the legislation.

Government Website for Free Covid Tests Goes Live Early

The website that allows Americans to order free at-home tests
for Covid-19 went live Tuesday, a day before the official launch
date of January 19.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the
site is being tested ahead of its official launch. "COVIDtests.gov
is in the beta phase right now, which is a standard part of the
process typically as it's being kind of tested in the early stages
of being rolled out," Psaki said. "It will officially launch
tomorrow morning."

At least in the beta phase, the official site sends users to a
web page hosted by the U.S. Postal Service – https://special.usps.com/testkits
– where households can order four tests.

The site was accepting basic shipping information as of mid-day
Tuesday, telling users that tests would start going out in "late
January." President Biden announced last week that the federal
government plans to order one billion tests for distribution, with
500 million to be made available as the public-facing website opens
this week.

It’s all Omicron now: Data from the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention shows that as of the week ending
January 15, the Omicron variant accounts for 99.5% of all Covid-19
cases in the U.S. — an astounding increase over the last few weeks,
given that it made up less than 10% of cases just over a month ago.
The surge in the new variant has boosted demand for take-home
tests, which have been hard to come by in many parts of the
country.

Speaking Monday at a virtual meeting of the World Economic
Forum, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci
addressed the question of whether Omicron could eventually provide
widespread immunity to the population, bringing an end to the
pandemic. "It is an open question whether it will be the live virus
vaccination that everyone is hoping for," he said. "I would hope
that that’s the case. But that would only be the case if we don’t
get another variant that eludes the immune response of the prior
variant."

Chart of the Day: US Lagging on Vaccinations

Millions of Americans who refuse to get vaccinated against
Covid-19 are sticking to their guns. As a result, the U.S. has the
second-lowest vaccination rate of the 15 countries monitored by
Morning
Consult, with only Russia recording a lower percentage.
Based on more than 52,000 interviews conducted earlier this month,
34% of Americans say they have not yet been vaccinated — and fully
one in five say they are unwilling to do so.

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