Joe Manchin Wants Democratic Leaders to Keep Guessing What He Wants

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the Democrat who has almost single-handedly stalled President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda in Congress, would probably rather have Democratic leaders rewrite the bill in the hopes he wants to pass it, NBC News reported Sunday. 

The bill passed by the House in November included more than $2 trillion in spending on child care, healthcare, climate change, and more. But in December, Manchin announced on Fox News that he “cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,” and since then, has not actually offered Democrats a proposal he could support. 

A person described as being familiar with Manchin’s thinking told NBC News that Democrats should just keep guessing at what Manchin wants. 

“The best approach would be for the White House to come up with a plan, get his approval, and then hand it off” to Democratic congressional leaders “to keep everybody in line,” the person told NBC News. “He’s not going to write a partisan bill. That’s not who he is.”

Manchin’s office did not respond to a request for comment from VICE News on Monday. 

Progressives in Congress have slammed Manchin for his opposition to the bill. “If Joe Manchin does not have the guts to stand up to the powerful special interests, he’s going to have to explain that to the people of West Virginia who are hurting, and hurting badly,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said in December. 

Publicly, Manchin has cited concerns about the national debt and inflation as reasons for his opposition. But Manchin told Senate Democratic colleagues privately if the Senate extends the expanded child tax credit–which helped slash the child poverty rate in the U.S. by 30 percent–he believed parents would use it for drugs, according to multiple reports in the last several months. 

Manchin also signed an agreement with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last summer with a cap of $1.5 trillion in new spending, Politico reported last fall. 

Since announcing his opposition to the bill passed by the House last year, Manchin has repeatedly said he’s open to more negotiations on what the final bill looks like. In February, he told NBC News he’d be open to a bill that contained climate and healthcare spending, including Obamacare subsidies and closing the Medicaid gap. 

But last week, Manchin bragged about coming out against the plan in an ad for Rep. David McKinley, a West Virginia Republican running for re-election to Congress. 

The White House has said they’ve met with Manchin to work out a Build Back Better deal, and Schumer and Manchin met in late April for a closed-door discussion on inflation, NBC News reported. But so far, no deal has emerged, even as the Democrats appear likely to lose control of Congress in November. 

“[The White House] want it more than he does,” the person close to Manchin told NBC News.

While Biden’s agenda languishes in Congress and the Supreme Court prepares to end abortion rights as we know them, the president gave a speech last week focusing on deficit reduction. 

“I have a plan to reduce the deficit even more, which will help reduce inflationary pressures and lower everyone’s costs for families,” Biden said Wednesday, reframing Build Back Better as a deficit reduction and anti-inflation maneuver. 

Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.