Joe Biden addresses the nation on Afghanistan on Monday, Aug. 16, 2021. (Video screenshot)
[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Policy.]
By Angela Rachidi
Real Clear Policy
Democrats have not held back in their criticism of Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) decision to halt negotiations over the Build Back Better legislation. In sharp statements, party leaders have said Sen. Manchin is working against the interests of the people he represents, and perhaps most dishonestly, against the wellbeing of West Virginian children.
The reality is that Sen. Manchin’s position on many social policies included in the Build Back Better plan aligns with most Americans, whether Democrat or Republican: supporting common sense, practical solutions to our country’s challenges that encourage personal responsibility, government accountability, and fiscal sanity.
It may seem like Sen. Manchin is out on a limb in his opposition to Democrats’ most recent social policy agenda, but according to public opinion polls, he represents the majority of American voters, including Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
Take, for example, Manchin’s approach to the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Policymakers on both sides of the aisle have long supported a larger CTC generally. In fact, the Republicans doubled this tax credit as part of their 2017 tax bill and Sen. Manchin voted for a temporary expansion to the credit in the American Rescue Plan. However, Democrats planned to make this program something entirely different from a tax credit for working families through Build Back Better. They planned to transform it into another welfare program for non-workers — something only 28 percent of registered voters and 47 percent of registered Democrats supported in one poll.
A recent study by a group of economists at the University of Chicago, including my AEI colleague Bruce Meyer, found that Democrats’ CTC policy under the Build Back Better plan would decrease by up to 1.5 million the number of people working and leave deep poverty rates untouched in the long-term. From a pragmatic standpoint, the evidence against this policy was mounting.
Moreover, the CTC policy, at best, received lackluster support from the public. A recent Morning Consult poll showed that just over half (53 percent) of registered voters supported extending a larger Child Tax Credit (CTC) for one year. But when respondents were asked to select their legislative priorities, only 14 percent placed this policy in their top five choices. Even among Democrats, only 17 percent prioritized a larger CTC.
Sen. Manchin’s concerns over the Build Back Better CTC reforms matched the concerns of millions of Americans. In an interview for a West Virginia podcast this week, Sen. Manchin was very clear about his position and his view on what his Democratic colleagues were trying to do generally with the plan. Referring to the Senate’s $6 trillion plan last summer, he said he told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “there is nothing about accountability, holding people accountable, no work requirement.” That there were “so many things to fix that they [Democratic leadership] won’t even talk about.”
Senator Manchin correctly understood that many of the social policy reforms in the Build Back Better legislation were costly, poorly targeted, and in many cases aimed at secondary problems. Manchin questioned, for example, why households with incomes up to $200,000 dollars need a larger CTC, and why people earning half a million dollars per year need a federal subsidy to purchase an electric car.
In the end, negotiators disregarded Sen. Manchin’s fundamental concerns, took a $6 trillion bill loaded with years of progressive social spending policy goals, and reduced the timeline to fit a $1.5 trillion framework in an attempt to gain his support. These budget gimmicks failed to address any of Manchin’s concerns in a meaningful way. The gimmicks didn’t fool the Senator, and they likely didn’t fool most voters.
No one can predict what will happen in 2022, but Democrats likely missed an important opportunity to pass sweeping policy reforms this year. The Washington Post revealed that Senator Manchin provided the White House with a counterproposal that matched his stated policy goals. The counterproposal didn’t include a CTC expansion, likely because Sen. Manchin believed such a policy failed to align with his goal of tying public assistance to work and targeting assistance to those who need it most.
Included were proposals for universal pre-kindergarten, expanded health care subsidies, and funding to address climate issues. President Biden and Majority Leader Schumer should have recognized that Sen. Manchin was never going to go along with the original Build Back Better plan; something he made clear repeatedly. Only time will tell if the party leadership will learn from this missed opportunity and develop policy reforms that actually meet the American people where their preferences and priorities lie.
Angela Rachidi is a senior fellow and the Rowe scholar in poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where she studies poverty and the effects of federal safety net programs on low-income people in America.
[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Policy.]
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