OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin made it clear once again on Tuesday that he will not support Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan.
CNN reporter Manu Raju took to Twitter to report that Manchin was asked whether he supports Build Back Better, which Biden’s roughly $2 trillion healthcare, education, and climate package.
Manchin made his position crystal clear: “It’s dead.”
“What Build Back Better bill? I don’t know what you guys are talking about,” Raju said he asked Manchin if he had had any talks on the matter since December and Manchin answered, “No, no, no, no. It’s dead.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, asked about Build Back Better, said: “What Build Back Better bill? I don’t know what you guys are talking about.”
I asked him if he’s had any talks on the matter since December. “No, no, no, no. It’s dead.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 1, 2022
Last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer decided to go ahead with a vote to end the filibuster to pass the Democrats’ voting legislation and it failed.
Manchin and Arizona Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema voted against nuking the filibuster.
If the vote was supposed to humiliate Manchin and Sinema, or if it was designed to pressure them, it was not successful.
Manchin stood before the Senate and gave a fantastic speech explaining that ending the filibuster would tear the nation apart.
“I cannot support such a perilous course for this nation when elected leaders are sent to Washington to unite our country, not to divide our country,” the senator said.
“Let this change happen in this way, and the Senate will be a body without rules,” he said.
“We’ve changed the rules,” in the past, Manchin said. “But we changed them with the rules. We didn’t break the rules to change the rules. But all of a sudden now we just can’t do it anymore. Just got to blow it up,” he said.
“The rule book means that the rules changes are done on the basis of broad, bipartisan consensus, not imposed on the minority by raw majority power,” he explained. “No matter who is in power.”
“The majority does not have that power to do that in this Senate.”
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“Now, my colleagues propose to sidestep this process,” he said. “They would use the nuclear option to override a rule we have used ourselves. But now seem to find it unacceptable.”
“Unacceptable now. We are going to break the rules to change the rules,” the senator said. “And make up new rules as we go along and invite ourselves to the future majorities to disregard the rule book at will.”
“We don’t have to change the rules to make our case to the American people about voting rights,” the senator said. “We could have kept voting rights legislation as a pending business for the Senate today. Next week, a month from now, this is important. Let’s work it out. Let’s see. Stay here and go at it.”
“Allowing one party to exert complete control in the Senate with only a simple majority will only pour fuel on the fire of political whiplash and dysfunction that is tearing this nation apart,” he said. “Contrary to what some have said, protecting the role of the minority – Democrat or Republican – has protected us from the volatile political swings that we have endured over the last 233 years.”
“Eliminating the filibuster would be the easy way out,” he argued.
“We’re called the United States, not the divided states,” he said. “And putting politics and party aside is what we’re supposed to do. It’s time that we do the hard work to forge difficult compromises that can stand the test of time.”
The vote to end the filibuster was 52 – 48 in favor of not ending it, with Sens. Manchin and Sinema joining the 50 Republicans.
In a speech to the Senate last week Sen. Sinema explained why she would not vote to end the filibuster.
“There’s no need for me to restate my longstanding support for the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation. There’s no need for me to restate its role in protecting our country from wild reversals of federal policy,” she said. “This week’s harried discussions about Senate rules are but a poor substitute for what I believe could have and should have been a thoughtful public debate at any time over the past year.”
“But what is the legislative filibuster, other than a tool that requires new federal policy to be broadly supported by senators, representing the broader cross-section of Americans… Demands to eliminate this threshold from whichever party holds the fleeting majority amount to a group of people separated on two sides of a canyon, shouting that solution to their colleagues,” she said.