Biden says he can convince Manchin to vote for his sweeping agenda: ‘I believe that Joe will be there’
By Kevin Liptak and Kate Sullivan, CNN
President Joe Biden said Tuesday he’s confident Sen. Joe Manchin will support his sweeping climate and social spending bill after the West Virginia Democrat publicly raised doubts about the plan.
“I believe that Joe will be there,” Biden said during a concluding news conference at the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
“He will vote for this if we have in this proposal what he has anticipated, and that is looking at the fine print and the detail of what comes out of the House in terms of the actual legislative initiatives,” Biden said.
Biden cast Manchin’s reticence at publicly supporting the package as a desire to ensure the final bill meets his expectations, which Biden said it would.
“Joe is looking for the precise detail to make sure nothing got slipped in terms of the way in which the legislation got written,” he said.
Manchin, whose vote is critical to the bill’s passage in the Senate, raised concerns about the bill’s accounting during a news conference on Monday. His objections were largely shrugged off by Democrats, who are pushing forward with a plan to vote on that bill and an accompanying infrastructure bill.
But Manchin has continued to dig in over opposition to key elements of the plan and has called on Congress not to rush the process.
He told reporters that he won’t support the plan until there is “greater clarity” about the impact it will have on the country’s national debt and the economy. The senator then told CNN on Tuesday he thinks it could take “a while” to finalize and enact the package.
But top Democrats are racing to try to finalize a deal on the package and pass it out of the House as soon as this week. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will then aim to put the bill on the Senate floor by mid-November, which could set up a potential clash with Manchin.
Manchin on Monday also called on the House of Representatives to pass the separate bipartisan infrastructure bill and warned, in an implicit rebuke to House progressives, that “holding this bill hostage” won’t work in getting him to support the larger social spending and economic package.
House progressives have so far held up the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill by demanding a concurrent vote on the larger social safety net plan that hasn’t been finalized.
White House senior staff spoke to Manchin after he raised concerns Monday about his support for the package, a source familiar with the talks tells CNN.
But Biden has not directly spoken with Manchin while he’s been in Scotland.
This story has been updated with additional information.
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CNN’s Phil Mattingly and Lauren Fox contributed to this report.
