Manchin pushes back at Pelosi ‘legislative language’ plan

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday shot down a push by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to get a deal on legislative text of a sweeping spending bill before a House vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Pelosi told reporters earlier Wednesday that Democrats need to “have agreement in legislative language” before a vote on a bipartisan Senate-passed infrastructure bill, which is still expected to get a vote on the House floor on Thursday.

Manchin, asked about the timeline, told reporters: “That won’t happen.”

“We haven’t been negotiating yet in a good faith. No one has been negotiating along those lines,” Manchin added.

New: Manchin told me “that won’t happen” when asked about Pelosi saying there needs to be deal on “legislative language” with WH on reconciliaton to get progressives to support infrastructure tomorrow

“No one has been negotiating along those lines with the other parties here” pic.twitter.com/Aabgu0kbut

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 29, 2021

Manchin’s comments come after he warned reporters earlier this week that it was unlikely Democrats would even be able to reach a “framework” for the social spending bill, including a top-line price tag, which Democratic leadership had hoped to be able to offer to progressives to get them to vote for the Senate-passed bipartisan bill.

Progressives have been pushing for months for Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to give them a reassurance that they’ll support a massive spending bill of up to $3.5 trillion. Democrats need every senator in their party to back the plan with Republicans unanimously opposed to it.

But neither have committed to supporting a larger bill. They’ve both warned they can’t support a $3.5 trillion price tag, forcing Democrats to recalibrate on the size of the bill. Biden urged moderates to give him a top-line figure they could live with during a closed-door meeting last week, but Manchin reiterated on Wednesday that “we haven’t talked about figures at all.” 

Pelosi upped the stakes of the standoff between moderates and progressives, and the House and Senate, on Wednesday, telling reporters that a promise from the Senate centrists to support the larger “family” package won’t be enough to spur the House to act. Instead, she wants legislative text to be drafted on that broader piece of Biden’s agenda.

“We come to a place where we have agreement in legislative language — not just principle, in legislative language — that the president supports,” she said. “It has to be his standard.” 

Pelosi cut a deal with moderates earlier this year to have a vote on the Senate-passed roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill by Sept. 27, though she delayed that vote until Thursday to try to defuse a progressive threat to vote against the bill.

Though progressives aren’t backing down in their threat to sink the infrastructure bill, delaying it would also risk alienating moderate Democrats who are trying to get the Senate legislation passed quickly.

Manchin, speaking to reporters, pushed for the House to pass the bipartisan bill and then for Democrats to keep negotiating on the reconciliation bill.

“All we need to do is pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, sit down and start negotiating in faith,” Manchin said.

Updated at 1:03 p.m.