Biden knows this….
Schumer Knows this….
Moderates are alright with it….
Progressives ain’t happy with it….
It JUST IS…..
“The White House is hamstrung by the Venn diagram of Manchin and Sinema asks,” said a person familiar with Manchin and White House dynamics.
Currently, informal reconciliation talks center on three major areas: climate change, prescription drug reform and deficit reduction. While the White House has yet to acknowledge other social spending elements have been moved off the table, multiple people familiar with the talks said President Joe Biden’s ambitions on child and elder care are all but dead.
But even getting a slimmed-down reconciliation package through the evenly divided Senate will depend solely on Biden’s ability to get Manchin and Sinema to yes. And seven months after the White House first tried to crack the Manchinema puzzle last September, it’s clear little has changed.
White House officials have yet to decipher Manchin’s demands. Some staff believe that he will never get to yes. Others confess to being out of ideas, even asking policy activists outside the White House for help in getting the West Virginia Democrat on board. The exasperation was compounded this week as the centrist senator indicated he wants to pursue a bipartisan energy bill as well — a detour that few believe will amount to anything but a distraction. And some Hill aides said it could put a larger reconciliation deal on the backburner.
“Folks just feel burned by Manchin,” a top Democratic operative working on the reviving of the bill said of the growing sentiment within parts of the White House. “That they can’t trust him.”….
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If the White House does somehow get Manchin on board, its reward will be a date with Sinema, who may prove even harder to please. While senior officials have courted Manchin on reviving reconciliation talks over the last few weeks, a person close to Sinema told POLITICO that the White House has yet to reach out to her on the issue….
image….Politico