After just one day, President Joe Biden’s proposed $5.8 trillion budget for next year is already dead.
Just months after killing Biden’s multi-trillion “Build Back Better” spending bill, Sen. Joe Manchin, D.W.V., has once again turned his back on the White House’s ambitious plans.
It’s just the latest in a series of setbacks for Biden. The president has struggled with rock bottom poll numbers, inflation, and a bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Before Christmas, Manchin sank the original “Build Back Better” which had already passed the Democrat-controlled House, saying it would fuel inflation and deepen deficits.
Biden and his allies touted his latest budget as focusing on fiscal responsibility, security at home and overseas, and investments in social programs to help families afford housing, child care, health care, and other costs.
Included in the bill was $2.5 trillion in tax increases over 10 years that included $361 billion from a minimum 20% tax on families worth $100 million – even on unrealized gains, which drew criticism from Manchin for its short-sightedness.
“You can’t tax something that’s not earned. Earned income is what we’re based on,” he told The Hill. “There’s other ways to do it. Everybody has to pay their fair share.”
“Everybody has to pay their fair share, that’s for sure. But unrealized gains is not the way to do it, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
Republicans all rejected Biden’s budget. That means in a split 50-50 Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the deciding vote, losing Manchin effectively kills the plan.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the president’s defense proposal would at best “leave our armed forces simply treading water” because of inflation. He said bigger budgets for agencies like the IRS and the Environmental Protection Agency were “bloated liberal nonsense.” And he labeled Biden’s $2.5 trillion, 10-year tax boosts, which the president said would only affect the nation’s highest earners, a “bomb of tax hikes.”
McConnell’s critique was no surprise. Presidents’ budgets are habitually ignored or reworked by Congress and mocked by the opposition party, a moment that lets both sides draw battle lines useful in upcoming elections.
But Biden’s budget, unveiled Monday, was an attempt at luring Manchin, probably the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, back to the bargaining table. Manchin on Monday downplayed reports that he’s resumed talks with top Democrats over a new plan.
“No, there’s nothing serious going on there,” he told reporters. He also said any new package should be completed by early summer because the fall congressional campaigns could make progress later too hard.
While much of Biden’s budget was similar to last year’s, it was also a more centrist repackaging that tilted some of its emphasis in Manchin’s direction.
It proposes $795 billion for defense that includes an increase for the Pentagon, and there’s money to help law enforcement hire more officers and improve training. “The answer is not to defund our police departments,” Biden told reporters, a pointed rebuke of a progressive rallying cry that’s been disavowed by nearly all congressional Democrats.
Manchin, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has repeatedly said he wants any new package to focus on domestic energy independence. He wants an “all of the above” policy that combats climate change but helps all forms of energy.
Representing a state that relies heavily on coal and energy production, Manchin and his position have gained political clout because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“What Russia has put out has to be replaced,” he said, referring to the U.S. cutoff of that country’s oil imports.
The Associated Press contributed to this article