His “Build Back Better” plan – $ 1.750 billion in spending to make America triumph over climate change and competition from China – received a possibly fatal blow this weekend after Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, endowed de facto with a right of veto, decided to vote against. Democrats are trying to save
With our correspondent in Washington, Guillaume Naudin
There will be no vote on the president’s social and climate spending plan. The project has been on hold since the Democratic Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, said no this weekend. But the Democrats don’t want to give up the game.
After revealing it on Sunday on Fox News, the conservative channel that Donald Trump was fond of, the elected representative of West Virginia repeated Monday in an interview with West Virginia Metro News radio that he would not vote in favor of these ” very very ambitious reforms »Aimed at lowering the cost of childcare or medicines, supporting household purchasing power or encouraging the purchase of electric cars. This centrist fears an inflationary effect and considers that aid should be more targeted. However, without him, there would be no democratic majority in the Senate. And impossible to count, as Joe Biden did recently to vote for gigantic infrastructure spending, on votes from the opposition: Republicans consider that the “Build Back Better” plan at $ 1,750 billion would tip the America in the ” socialism », The ultimate political foil in the United States.
Chuck Schumer on the move
The President and Joe Manchin have been friends for a long time and still are. 24 hours after a press release in which she virulently denounced a breach of the commitments of the centrist Democratic senator from West Virginia to the president and other elected Democrats, the spokeswoman for the White House is trying to show that the second plan is not dead.
The Biden administration also lets it be known that there was a telephone contact between the two old friends after the announcement by Joe Manchin on the conservative Fox News channel of his withdrawal from negotiations. It is that the president must face the anger of the elected progressive, the left of the democratic party. They feel cheated. They explain that they voted in favor of the infrastructure plan in exchange for the promise that the Senate would quickly vote in favor of the now blocked second plan. They are now demanding that the president use his executive powers to pass measures contained therein.
The leader of the very narrow Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, tried to rally the troops of his camp in a press release: ” We will vote on a revised version “Of the major project and” we will keep voting until we have something “. He therefore wants to organize a vote at the start of the school year to make everyone face up to their responsibilities. He obviously targets Joe Manchin. He explained himself on Monday on a local radio station in his state to suggest that he is not the type to be intimidated.