Rebel Democrat torpedoes Joe Biden’s reform package

Key senator refuses to vote for the Democrats’ signature ‘build back better’ reform, throwing the party’s political strategy into disarray.

Rebel senator Joe Manchin in the basement of the US Capitol Building following talks with fellow Democrats. Picture: AFP

Joe Biden’s reform agenda is in tatters after a key senator declared he wouldn’t vote for the Democrats’ signature ‘build back better’ reform, throwing the party’s political strategy into disarray leading into the 2022 elections.

After months of tense negotiations, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin revealed on Sunday he wouldn’t support the roughly US$2 trillion build back better package, signalling he would use his balance of power vote in the 50-50 senate to torpedo the most ambitious piece of legislation in fifty years.

“When you have these things coming at you the way they are right now … I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,“ the Senator said, speaking on Fox News on Sunday morning and alluding to a jump in inflation and large and growing federal budget deficits.

The legislation, passed by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives a month ago, would have made sweeping changes to the US welfare, health and climate change policy, including ‘free’ childcare and preschool, expanded child welfare payments, four weeks of paid leave, and massive electric car and renewable energy subsidies.

“My Democratic colleagues are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face,” the Senator said in a subsequent statement.

“I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than US$29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hardworking American at the gasoline pumps, grocery stores and utility bills with no end in sight,” he added.

The President, who had been in personal negotiations with Senator Manchin for months, reducing the initial cost of the reform from US$3.5 trillion, had cast the reforms as a visionary expansion of the US government that would reshape the nation’s social security net more along European lines.

The White House immediately issued a lengthy statement, calling the move a “sudden and inexplicable reversal” and a “breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate”.

“We will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honour his prior commitments and be true to his word,” press secretary Jen Psaki added.

Bernie Sanders, an influential left-wing Senator who twice ran for president on the Democrat ticket, demanded the bill be brought to a vote in the Senate in any case.

“If he doesn’t have the courage to do the right thing for the working families of Virginia let him vote no, let him vote no in front of the whole world,” the senator said.

Democrat senator Maxine Waters called the decision “absolutely disgusting and amazing”, reflecting the particular ire from the far left of the party that will be directed toward the Senator.

Democrats had hoped the reforms, which national polling had shown most Americans had supported, would bolster their political prospects in an election year most analysts expect to be uphill battle amid falling political support for the President.

The Build Back Better Package was distinct from a US$1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, focused mainly on improving or extending road, rail and port infrastructure, which passed Congress in early November.

Senator Manchin’s rejection of the bill will shift Democrat focus to a voting rights bill, designed to override states’ ability to set their own voting rule, although it will similarly require the support of Senator Manchin and other more conservative democrats.