Biden: We'll Have to Break Up Build Back Better Plan

U.S. President Joe Biden holds a formal news conference at the White House
KEVIN LAMARQUE
By Yuval Rosenberg

Biden Says His Spending Plan Will Probably Have to Be Broken
Up

On day 365 of his administration, President Joe Biden stepped
before the White House press corps on Wednesday afternoon and
sought to use his first solo news conference in months to reset the
political narrative of his presidency after a string of
high-profile setbacks for his agenda.

“It’s been a year of challenges but it’s also been a year of
enormous progress,” Biden said, touting the increase in Covid
vaccinations, jobs and wages, among other accomplishments.

With dismal approval ratings driven by inflation at a
four-decade high and a record-breaking surge of Covid cases, Biden
sought to assure the public that he understood the frustration
rippling across the nation and is working to address the crises
facing the economy, from fixing strained supply chains to
addressing the pandemic to reining in inflation.

Biden argued that the bipartisan infrastructure act he signed
into law will boost the economy and that the Build Back Better plan
now stalled in Congress would ease long-term inflation and cut
costs American families face for prescription drugs and child care.
“Bottom line, if price increases are what you’re worried about, the
best answer is my Build Back Better plan,” Biden said.

Asked if he had overpromised Americans on what he could achieve,
Biden insisted he had made enormous progress and disputed the
notion that his agenda must be scaled back. He said he needs to
make a stronger case to the public in defense of what he’s done and
what he wants to do. He also lashed out at Republicans,
acknowledging he has been unable to win their support. “I did not
anticipate that there’d be such a stalwart effort to make sure that
the most important thing was that President Biden didn’t get
anything done,” he said. “What are Republicans for? What are they
for? Name me one thing they’re for.”

Breaking up Build Back Better: Biden may have sought to
blame Republicans, but major portions of his agenda, from the Build
Back Better bill to voting rights, have been stalled by members of
his own party, namely Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema
(D-AZ).

The president indicated Wednesday he still thinks he can make
progress on the social spending and climate package — but
acknowledged that the plan would likely need to be broken into
parts.

“I’m confident we can get pieces, big chunks of the Build Back
Better law signed into law,” Biden said, later adding, “It’s clear
to me that we’re going to have to probably break it up.”

Biden said he has been “talking to a number of my colleagues on
the Hill” and, based on those conversations, he believes that
Democrats would be able to get the support they need for the energy
and climate provisions in the package. And he noted that Manchin
strongly supports the early education programs in the package.

“I think we can break the package up, get as much as can now and
come back and fight for the rest later,” Biden said.

The White House reportedly is planning to re-engage with Manchin
on the legislation after the West Virginia centrist announced last
month that he could not support the House version of the bill. But
Biden officials want negotiations to be less public than they were
last year. “One lesson we learned in the first year is, I think,
the less we talk about our negotiations with specific senators and
congressmen, the better we are so I’m going to say our talks with
Sen. Manchin will proceed directly and privately,” White House
Chief of Staff Ron Klain told
The Wall Street Journal.

The bottom line: Democrats had planned to use the budget
reconciliation process to pass the Build Back Better bill by a
simple majority vote in the Senate. If they break up the package
and don’t use reconciliation, they would face additional obstacles
to actually getting legislation passed, even as the approach forces
lawmakers to publicly support or oppose elements of the package in
a midterm election year.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus, told the Journal that Democrats should try to
keep the bigger plan together to avoid those procedural hurdles.
And she put the onus on Biden to get the Democratic holdouts to
back a plan resembling the $1.75 trillion framework the White House
released in October. “I think it’s really up to the president to
get Sen. Manchin as close to the framework as possible,” she said.
“The president is the only one who can really deliver that
framework, he negotiated it. His credibility is on the line. We all
compromised a lot to get to that framework.”

Quote of the Day

“I don’t care if you call it ‘The Joe Manchin Bill.’ I just
want it passed.”

– An unnamed Democratic lawmaker, as quoted by
The Hill in a story detailing the desperation some
in the party feel as they try to salvage portions of their economic
and environmental agenda in the face of intraparty divisions in an
election year.

Blue State Dems Sticking to Their Demands on SALT
Deduction

Adding to the pile of problems weighing on President Biden’s
Build Back Better agenda, a key Democratic lawmaker reminded the
White House Wednesday that a group of blue state lawmakers are
sticking with their demand that the legislative package include a
big increase in the value of the state and local tax deduction.

“We will not go for this agenda, as important as it is, unless
we get the state and local tax deduction,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, who
represents a suburban district in Long Island, told a meeting of
the U.S. Conference of Mayors. “For me, it’s existential. In the
state of New York, it’s existential.”

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski told
Bloomberg News that he agreed. “It will certainly
be an issue in my race,” he said. “I worked my heart out to restore
this deduction.”

The version of the Build Back Better bill passed by the House
includes an increase in the SALT deduction to $80,000 per year, up
from the current $10,000. The increase has drawn opposition from
both left and right, with critics pointing out that the higher
deduction cap would provide a substantial windfall to some
high-income households.

Suozzi said that despite the criticism, he thought he
could make a deal with Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema
(AZ), two key Democratic senators who have held the bill up in the
Senate, though it could be tricky given the narrow margin for
error. “Manchin’s a really old-school politician and I think that a
deal can be made with him,” Suozzi said. “Sinema is not as easy.
She has certain positions and she is intractable on those
positions.”

US to Provide 400 Million N95 Face Masks

The Biden administration will start distributing 400 million
non-surgical N95 masks next week as part of its effort to combat
the spread of Covid-19, a White House official said Wednesday.

The unnamed official
told CNN that the masks would come from the
Strategic National Stockpile and made available for free through
pharmacies and community health centers, with a limit of three per
person. The federal stockpile currently holds about 750 million
non-surgical N95 masks, which filter 95% of particles in the air
and provide better protection against the coronavirus than cloth
masks.

The White House has called on Americans to continue to use the
masks, despite resistance among some parts of the population. “I
know we all wish that we could finally be done with wearing masks.
I get it,” President Joe Biden said last week. “But there is a --
they're a really important tool to stop the spread, especially of
the highly transmittable Omicron variant. So, please, please wear
the mask.”

The mask distribution is one of several new Covid-related
initiatives that have taken effect in January. The federal website
that provides a limited number of free Covid at-home tests went
live Wednesday, and as of January 15, private health insurers are
required to cover the cost of at-home testing.

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