WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer vowed Monday to hold a vote early next year on the $2 trillion bill to overhaul the country's health care, education, climate, immigration and tax laws, despite Sunday's announcement by Sen. Joe Manchin that he could not support President Joe Biden's signature legislation.
Although the Build Back Better Act cannot pass without the support of Manchin, D-W.Va., in the evenly divided Senate, Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a letter that a vote would put every senator on record.
"Senators should be aware that the Senate will, in fact, consider the Build Back Better Act, very early in the new year so that every Member of this body has the opportunity to make their position known on the Senate floor, not just on television," Schumer said. That was a reference to Manchin's sudden TV announcement against the bill Sunday, when the White House said it was given just a 20-minute heads-up.
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"We are going to vote on a revised version of the House-passed Build Back Better Act," Schumer said, "and we will keep voting on it until we get something done."
Schumer said senators would also consider voting-rights legislation as soon as the first week after they return to Washington in January: "If Senate Republicans continue to abuse the filibuster and prevent the body from considering this bill, the Senate will then consider changes to any rules which prevent us from debating and reaching final conclusion on important legislation," he wrote.
Schumer's letter came a day after Manchin, during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," delivered what many saw as a potentially fatal blow to a centerpiece of Biden's agenda with his declaration that he "just can't" support it.
Manchin and Biden spoke Sunday night in a call that was described as cordial and that signaled they would resume work on a new bill early in the new year, according to people who spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal the private conversation.
Manchin appeared dug in Monday during an appearance on the MetroNews radio station in West Virginia. He said he has been urging his colleagues to put the bill to a vote and said Democrats overestimated their ability to get him on board.
"I'm not blaming anybody," he said. "I knew where they were, and I knew what they could and could not do. They just never realized it, because they figured surely, dear God, we can move one person, surely we can badger and beat one person up, surely we can get enough protesters to make that person uncomfortable enough [that] they'll just say, 'I'll go for anything. Just quit.'"
"Well guess what? I'm from West Virginia," Manchin said. "I'm not where they're from and they can just beat the living crap out of people and think they'll be submissive."
During the interview, Manchin also complained about public pressure from White House staffers, saying, "They put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable."
Pressed further, he refused to specify what infuriated him, beyond that it had pushed him to "the wit's end," and he believed it had been driven by White House staff members. He refrained, though, from directly criticizing the president.
Asked if he saw a way forward -- including breaking the bill up into smaller pieces of legislation -- Manchin complained about the legislative process surrounding the Build Back Better Act, saying it was not subject to sufficient scrutiny by committees.
"Don't you think maybe a committee could put eyes on it, have hearings where the public can see where the differences may be between Democrats or between Democrats and Republicans?" he said. "That's what hearings are for, and then make a decision."
He said negotiators failed to adequately respond to his concerns, including the lack of guardrails on new spending and its possible effect on inflation, and sufficiently cut down the size and scope of the measure.
Manchin also said he had agreed to take up the bill only in hopes of rolling back parts of the 2017 Republican tax cuts, an effort that faltered amid opposition from another key centrist, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz.
'WE NEVER GIVE UP'
Appearing at a news conference Monday in San Francisco, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she was "not deterred at all" by Manchin's announcement.
"Well, we never give up," Pelosi said. "This will happen, it must happen, and we will do it as soon as we can. There are conversations that are ongoing, but we cannot walk away from this commitment. The Build Back Better is about transforming our society."
"I have confidence that Sen. Manchin cares about our country and that at some point very soon we can take up the legislation," she said.
Manchin's announcement Sunday, which he later fleshed out in a statement, prompted a wave of criticism from fellow Senate Democrats as well as the White House.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki unleashed a statement accusing Manchin of making a "sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position" and calling his comments a "breach of his commitments" to Biden and Democratic lawmakers if he has decided to end negotiations.
Asked Monday about the fallout, Psaki told reporters that Biden still considers Manchin a friend and will keep talking. "What's most on the president's mind is the risk of inaction," she said.
In explaining his opposition after weeks of negotiations with Biden and his Senate colleagues, Manchin cited rising consumer prices, the growing federal debt and the arrival of a new coronavirus variant as reasons he could not supply his vote. During the radio interview Monday, he emphasized the role of inflation in his thinking.
Schumer's vow to hold a vote on the bill echoed that of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who said Sunday that Manchin would "have a lot of explaining to do to the people of West Virginia."
In his letter Monday, Schumer noted that the negotiations have already delayed an anticipated vote on the bill by the end of the year.
However, "Neither that delay, nor other recent pronouncements, will deter us from continuing to try to find a way forward," Schumer wrote. "We simply cannot give up. We must and we will keep fighting to deliver for working families."
Schumer acknowledged "moments of deep discontent and frustration" that Manchin and Biden had not bridged their differences to fulfill a Christmas deadline Schumer tried to impose.
Returning to the White House from Delaware on Monday, Biden did not respond to questions about Manchin shouted by reporters.
Manchin continued to face blowback Monday from Democratic colleagues, particularly from liberal lawmakers.
During a morning television appearance, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., accused Manchin of a "betrayal of working families across the country" and said his announcement was "an egregious breach of the trust of the president."
She was referring to a claim by the White House that Manchin, just days earlier, had promised to continue negotiations with Biden after submitting a framework of a version of the bill he could back.
"No one can really be promised a Manchin vote," Ocasio-Cortez said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," adding that fellow Democrats had been "strung along" by the senator.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., a leader of the progressive caucus, spoke with Manchin early Monday, but emerged warning her colleagues that the senator was an untrustworthy partner who "went back on his word."
Jayapal said Democrats were working with the White House on alternative means of reaching the bill's goals through executive or administrative actions.
"We cannot make the same mistakes twice," she said on a conference call with other progressives. "We cannot hang the futures of millions of Americans on the words of one man."
MANCHIN: STILL A DEMOCRAT
Manchin's statements Monday suggested that compromise could be unattainable without a serious overhaul of the Build Back Better Act and further concessions from liberal Democrats.
"It was never going to change -- it never could change with that many people," Manchin said. He added, referring to his party's leaders, that "you all are approaching legislation as if you have 55 or 60 senators that are Democrats, and you can do whatever you want."
Much of the plan, originally envisioned as spending as much as $6 trillion to reshape nearly every facet of American life, had already been substantially scaled back by Manchin's fiscal concerns and allegiance to his coal-producing state. Multiple climate provisions, including a key clean electricity program, were removed because of his objections, and a paid family and medical leave program was expected to follow suit.
Senate Democrats are set to convene a caucus meeting today to discuss the path forward.
Asked if he would consider switching parties given the public tensions, Manchin suggested that he would prefer to remain a Democrat.
"I would like to hope that there's still Democrats that feel like I do -- I'm socially and fiscally responsible and socially compassionate," Manchin said. "Now if there's no Democrats like that, then they'll have to push me wherever they want me."
Manchin last week made the White House a concrete counteroffer, saying he would accept a $1.8 trillion package that included universal prekindergarten for 10 years, an expansion of Obamacare and hundreds of billions of dollars to combat climate change, three people familiar with the matter said. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door deliberations.
But the proposal excluded an extension of the expanded child tax credit that the administration has seen as a cornerstone of Biden's economic legacy, the people said, an omission difficult for the White House to accept. Nevertheless, the White House was weighing how to respond to Manchin's proposal, until Sunday.
Common ground remains. While the precise details of Manchin's offer remain unclear, it adheres to his repeated demand that Democrats fund their economic programs for 10 years rather than reducing their top-line cost by funding them for only a few years, people familiar with the matter said.
Information for this article was contributed by John Wagner, Sean Sullivan, Seung Min Kim, Jeff Stein and Tyler Pager of The Washington Post; by Emily Cochrane and Michael D. Shear of The New York Times; and by Lisa Mascaro, Farnoush Amiri, Alan Fram, Darlene Superville, Colleen Long and Hope Yen of The Associated Press.