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Centrist US Lawmaker Announces Firm Opposition to Biden Safety Net Legislation

A centrist U.S. Democratic lawmaker, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said Sunday he is definitively opposed to President Joe Biden’s roughly $2 trillion social safety net spending plan, likely dooming its passage without further sharp revisions in its scope and cost. 

Manchin’s vote was essential in the politically divided Senate for passage of one of the key elements of the Democratic president’s legislative agenda. None of the 50 Republicans in the 100-member chamber supports the plan to expand health care for older Americans, provide universal pre-kindergarten classes, authorize new funding to combat climate change and offer more financial support for low-income Americans. 

Democrats had hoped to push through the legislation on a 51-50 vote before Christmas, with Vice President Kamala Harris providing the tie-breaking vote. The House of Representatives has already approved a version of the bill. 

But Manchin, who discussed the measure at length last week with Biden, told the “Fox News Sunday” show, “If I can’t go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I can’t vote for it. And I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation.” 

“I just can’t,” Manchin said. “I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there. This is a ‘no’ on this legislation.” 

The White House said the lawmaker last week offered a framework for a compromise on the legislation and “promised to continue conversations in the days ahead, and to work with us to reach that common ground.” 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement that if Manchin’s comments “indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.” 

She rebuffed Manchin’s claims that the legislation would add to the surge in consumer prices in the United States, the highest in nearly four decades, or add to the country’s long-term debt, now more than $29 trillion, because the new spending would be paid for with higher taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals.

One of the key Senate architects of the legislation, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, reacted angrily to Manchin’s refusal to support fellow Democratic colleagues and vote for it. Sanders said Manchin “doesn’t have the guts” to take on special business interests who would be impacted most by the legislation.

Sanders told CNN’s “State of the Union” show he wants the Senate to vote on the measure anyway, even if it is headed to defeat, to force Manchin to publicly account for his vote. 

“He’s going to have a lot of explaining to do with the people of West Virginia,” Sanders said. “Let him vote ‘no’ and explain it to the world.” 
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Johnny Isakson, Former Georgia Republican US Senator, Dies 

Johnny Isakson, an affable Georgia Republican politician who rose from the ranks of the state legislature to become a U.S. senator known as an effective, behind-the-scenes consensus builder, died Sunday. He was 76.

Isakson’s son John Isakson told The Associated Press that his father died in his sleep before dawn at his home in Atlanta. John Isakson said that although his father had Parkinson’s disease, the cause of death was not immediately apparent. 

“He was a great man and I will miss him,” John Isakson said. 

Johnny Isakson, whose real estate business made him a millionaire, spent more than four decades in Georgia political life. In the Senate, he was the architect of a popular tax credit for first-time home buyers that he said would help invigorate the struggling housing market. As chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, he worked to expand programs offering more private health care choices for veterans.

Isakson’s famous motto was, “There are two types of people in this world: friends and future friends.” That approach made him exceedingly popular among colleagues. 

“Johnny was one of my very best friends in the Senate,” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Sunday. “But the amazing thing about him was that at any given time, approximately 98 other Senators felt the same way. His infectious warmth and charisma, his generosity, and his integrity made Johnny one of the most admired and beloved people in the Capitol.” 

In 2015, while gearing up to seek a third term in the Senate, Isakson disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a chronic and progressive movement disorder that had left him with a noticeably slower, shuffling gait. Soon after winning reelection in 2016, he underwent a scheduled surgery on his back to address spinal deterioration. He frequently depended on a cane or wheelchair in later years. 

In August 2019, not long after fracturing four ribs in a fall at his Washington apartment, Isakson announced he would retire at year’s end with two years remaining in his term. 

In a farewell Senate speech, he pleaded for bipartisanship at a time of bitter divisions between Republicans and Democrats. He cited his long friendship with U.S. Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat and civil rights hero, as an example of two men willing to put party aside to work on common problems.

“Let’s solve the problem and then see what happens,” Isakson said. “Most people who call people names and point fingers are people who don’t have a solution themselves.”

Lewis, who died last year, saluted Isakson on the House floor in 2019, saying, “We always found a way to get along and do the work the people deserve.” 

After the speech, Lewis walked over to hug a hobbling Isakson, saying, “I will come over to meet you, brother.” 

An Atlanta native, Isakson failed in his first bid for elected office: a seat on the Cobb County Commission in 1974. Two years later, he was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, becoming the only Republican to beat a Democratic incumbent in Georgia the same year Jimmy Carter was elected president. Isakson served 17 years in the state House and Senate. Always in the minority in Georgia’s General Assembly, he helped blaze the path toward the GOP ascendancy of the 2000s, fueled by Atlanta’s suburban boom. By the end of Isakson’s career, some of those same suburbs were swinging back toward Democrats.

“As a businessman and a gifted retail politician, Johnny paved the way for the modern Republican Party in Georgia, but he never let partisan politics get in the way of doing what was right,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement. 

Isakson suffered humbling setbacks before ascending to the Senate. In 1990, he lost the race for governor to Democrat Zell Miller. In 1996, Guy Millner defeated him in a Republican primary for Senate before Millner lost to Democrat Max Cleland. 

Many observers chalked up the loss to Isakson not being tough enough on abortion. In the primary race, Isakson ran a television advertisement in which he said that while he was against the government funding or promoting abortion, he would “not vote to amend the Constitution to make criminals of women and their doctors.” 

“I trust my wife, my daughter and the women of Georgia to make the right choice,” he said.

He later changed his mind on the contentious issue.

Isakson’s jump to Congress came about in 1998, when U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich decided not to seek reelection. Isakson won a 1999 special election to fill the suburban Atlanta seat. 

He finally made it to the U.S. Senate in 2004 when he defeated Democrat Denise Majette with 58% of the vote. He served with Georgia senior Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a close friend and classmate from the University of Georgia. 

Isakson was viewed as a prohibitive early favorite to succeed Republican Sonny Perdue in the governor’s mansion in 2010. But he opted instead to seek a second term in the Senate. While there, he developed a reputation as a moderate, although he rarely split with his party on key votes. 

He was a lead negotiator in 2007 on immigration legislation that President George W. Bush backed but ultimately abandoned after it met strong resistance from the right. Chambliss and Isakson were booed at a Georgia Republican Party convention that year over their immigration stance. 

Isakson supported limited school vouchers and played a major role in crafting Bush’s signature education plan, the No Child Left Behind Act. He also pushed an unsuccessful compromise bill on the politically charged issue of stem cell research that would have expanded research funding while also ensuring that human embryos weren’t harmed.

That deal-making approach has fallen out of favor for many voters, but Isakson’s lineage remains a presence in Georgia politics. State Attorney General Chris Carr was the former senator’s chief of staff. “When I was a young man just getting started in politics, I wanted to be like Johnny Isakson,” Carr said Sunday. 

Democratic Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock said “all of Georgia” grieves Isakson’s death. Warnock, who took over Isakson’s old seat after defeating Republican Kelly Loeffler in a January runoff, had a special connection to Isakson, who attended an annual service in honor of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The church’s pulpit was King’s and later became Warnock’s. Warnock also has continued Isakson’s tradition of an annual barbecue lunch for all senators. 

Isakson’s “model of public service is an example to future generations of leaders on how to stand on principle and make progress while also governing with compassion and a heart for compromise,” Warnock said Sunday. 

Isakson graduated from the University of Georgia in 1966 and joined his family-owned company, Northside Realty in Cobb County, a year later. It grew to one of the largest independent residential real estate brokerage companies in the country during his more than 20 years at the helm. Isakson also served in the Georgia Air National Guard from 1966 to 1972. 

He is survived by his wife, Diane, whom he married in 1968; three children and nine grandchildren. 

 
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Biden Pledges Fight for Voting Rights, Police Reform 

President Joe Biden pledged Friday to fight for stalled voting rights and police reform legislation, addressing graduates of South Carolina State University amid the harsh reality that months of talks with lawmakers have failed to move the measures closer to becoming law.

Biden spoke at the historically Black school a day after conceding that his nearly $2 trillion social and environmental bill was unlikely to become law this year, as he had hoped, due to continued disagreement among fellow Democrats. Republicans unanimously oppose the spending.

Wearing a black gown as he delivered the December commencement address, the president bemoaned GOP opposition that has kept voting rights bills from advancing in the 50-50 Senate following passage by the Democratic-controlled House. He blamed “that other team, which used to be called the Republican Party,” for refusing to even allow the bills to be debated.

“But this battle’s not over,” Biden said. “We’re going to keep up the fight until we get it done.”

‘Sacred right to vote’

Biden’s vow to keep pushing to protect what he called “the sacred right to vote” comes as the NAACP and similar groups have grown frustrated with the White House over the lack of progress on the issue. Voting rights is a priority for Democrats heading into next year’s midterm elections after Republican-controlled legislatures passed a wave of restrictive new voting laws.

Biden pledged similar advocacy for police reform, another issue important to the Black community after a series of killings of Black men by police, including George Floyd’s death last year after a Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for about nine minutes.

The House passed a sweeping police reform measure earlier this year in response to Floyd’s killing, but months of negotiations among a bipartisan group of senators failed to produce a bill.

Biden vowed to keep pressing for police reform, too.

“The fight’s not over,” he said at the alma mater of House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and South Carolina’s only Democrat in the delegation. Clyburn, who sat on stage with Biden, accepted his degree — earned 60 years earlier — from the president, a longtime friend.

Pitch to students

In his speech, Biden at times sounded more like a candidate as he used the appearance before a predominantly Black audience to stress how his administration is working to improve their economic and educational standing, from increasing funding for historically Black colleges and universities to fighting housing discrimination.

Black voters, in South Carolina and other states, were a crucial part of the coalition that helped Biden win election as president.

He also touched on the infrastructure bill he recently signed into law, including the promise of thousands of new jobs, but avoided discussing his centerpiece social welfare and environmental bill. That measure remains bottled up in the Senate, largely because of opposition from a fellow Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and facing an uncertain fate next year, when Democrats need accomplishments to show as they campaign for reelection in the November midterms.

Biden also pledged to help stamp out hate and racism, referenced the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol carried out in hopes of subverting his election, and talked about his appreciation for historically Black colleges and universities. He noted that key members of his team had graduated from historically Black schools, including Vice President Kamala Harris, a Howard University alum.

“You can defeat hate, but you can’t eliminate it,” Biden said. “It just slides back under a rock and, when given oxygen by political leaders, it comes out ugly and mean as it was before. We can’t give it any oxygen. We have to step on it.”

He did not discuss legislative strategy, including how he would turn hard Democratic opposition to the $2 trillion plan into support. All he offered was the promise to keep fighting — the same advice he gave the graduates.

Biden told them their “secret power” is the ability to understand the injustices and complications of the world, with the enduring legacies of racism leaving Black Americans at a disadvantage in home ownership and economic mobility.

Why the delay for Clyburn?

There were no December ceremonies when Clyburn graduated in 1961, so he received his diploma by mail. Instead of addressing this year’s graduates, as had been planned, Clyburn joined the procession of students on stage to receive his degree from Biden, whom he invited to deliver the commencement address.

The president visited at a fraught time for his agenda, with the future of his $2 trillion social and environmental spending package in doubt. While Democrats had hoped to make progress on the bill before Christmas, continued disagreements among lawmakers have all but halted negotiations, and Biden himself has signaled Democrats should shift their focus to passing a voting rights bill — another heavy lift in the evenly divided Senate.

On Friday, Senate Democrats huddled privately, as they have for weeks, discussing with parliamentary experts ways to adjust the chamber’s filibuster rules so they can push past Republican opposition and pass voting and election bills ahead of the 2022 midterms. No decisions have been reached, but senators insist they’re making progress.

Biden and Clyburn had been planning a gathering in South Carolina, Clyburn told reporters this week, and they figured Friday’s ceremony would suffice. The meeting was significant for both, in that it was Biden’s first time as president in South Carolina, where Clyburn’s public support is credited with boosting Biden to the Democratic presidential nomination.

On the cusp of South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary, after struggling through less than stellar performances in other early nominating contests, Biden secured a public endorsement from Clyburn, an awaited signal for many Black voters that Biden would be the candidate to stand up for their interests.

Biden subsequently bested chief rival Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday and claimed the nomination before defeating Republican incumbent Donald Trump in the general election. 
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US Senate Parliamentarian Deals Democrats Blow on Immigration

Democrats must drop an effort to let millions of immigrants remain temporarily in the U.S. from their expansive social and environment bill, the Senate parliamentarian decided Thursday, dealing the latest blow to a longtime priority of the party, migrant advocates and progressives.

The opinion by Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate’s nonpartisan arbiter of its rules, all but certainly means Democrats will ultimately have to pull the proposal from their 10-year, roughly $2 trillion package. The measure carries health care, family services and climate change initiatives, mostly paid for with higher taxes on corporations and the rich, that are top priorities for President Joe Biden.

When the Senate considers the overall legislation — which is currently stalled — Democrats are expected to try reviving the immigration provisions, or perhaps even stronger language giving migrants a way to become permanent residents or citizens. But such efforts would face solid opposition from Republicans and probably a small number of Democrats, which would be enough for defeat in the 50-50 chamber.

MacDonough’s opinion was no surprise — it was the third time since September that she said Democrats would violate Senate rules by using the legislation to help immigrants and should remove immigration provisions from the bill. Nonetheless, it was a painful setback for advocates hoping to capitalize on Democratic control of the White House and Congress for gains on the issue, which have been elusive in Congress for decades.

MacDonough’s finding was the second defeat of the day inflicted on Democrats’ social and economic package. Biden was also forced to concede that Senate work on the massive overall bill would be delayed until at least January after his negotiations stalled with holdout Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who wants to further cut and reshape the legislation.

“We will advance this work together over the days and weeks ahead,” the president said in a statement.

Democrats’ latest immigration proposal would have let an estimated 6.5 million immigrants in the U.S. since at least 2010 without legal authorization apply for up to two five-year work permits. The permits would let them hold jobs, avoid deportation and in some instances travel abroad without risking their residency here. Applicants would have to meet background checks and other requirements.

Immigration advocates and their Democratic Senate allies have said they will continue seeking a way to include provisions helping migrants in the legislation, but their pathway is unclear.

“Disappointed. And we’re considering what options remain,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, told reporters about the parliamentarian’s ruling.

‘Substantial policy changes’

Democrats are using special rules that would let them push the overall bill through the Senate by a simple majority vote, not the 60 votes legislation usually needs to end debate and move forward. GOP opposition means the immigration provisions Democrats want would not survive as a free-standing bill.

But under those same rules, such bills can’t have provisions that are driven more by policy changes than by cuts or increases in the federal budget.

The parliamentarian makes that call. Her opinion said Democrats had failed that test because the disputed language would have changed a program that currently awards work permits sparingly into one where it would be mandatory to issue the permits to migrants who qualify for them.

“These are substantial policy changes with lasting effects just like those we previously considered and outweigh the budgetary impact,” MacDonough wrote. Earlier this year, she rejected two Democratic proposals that would have each created a chance for permanent legal status for 8 million migrants.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill’s immigration provisions would end up costing the government around $111 billion over 10 years, largely because of federal benefits immigrants would qualify to receive by gaining legal status.

The rejected plan would have created no new pathway for those getting work permits to remain in the U.S. permanently. But the budget office estimated last month that of 6.5 million migrants who would ultimately get the temporary permits, around 3 million would later gain permanent residency because their new status would remove some obstacles in that process.

Many progressives and migrant supporters have long urged Democrats to vote to overrule the parliamentarian, whose opinion is advisory and whose decisions senators seldom overturn. Advocates resumed pressuring the party to do so after MacDonough’s ruling.

“This is a fight about racial justice,” said Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of United We Dream, an immigrant rights group. Citing the strong support Democrats usually receive from Hispanic voters, she said advocates would accept no excuses for inaction.

“It’s time for Democrats to deliver on their promises; they must disregard today’s recommendation” by the parliamentarian and add citizenship provisions to the bill, she said.

Overturning the ruling

It seems unlikely that Democrats would have the unanimous support they would need to overturn MacDonough’s opinion. Manchin, one of Congress’ more conservative Democrats, has said he would not vote to overturn a ruling of the parliamentarian “on every issue.”

Even so, top Democrats signaled Thursday evening that they would try.

“We strongly disagree with the Senate parliamentarian’s interpretation of our immigration proposal, and we will pursue every means to achieve a path to citizenship” in the social and environment bill, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Durbin and four Latino Democratic senators said in a statement. They added, “We stand with the millions of immigrant families across the country who deserve better and for whom we will not stop fighting.”

The latest proposal fell well short of Biden’s initial plan this year to give the 11 million immigrants in the U.S. without legal authorization a way to seek permanent residency and even citizenship.

Even so, it would have been Congress’ most sweeping move in decades to help migrants in this country. A 1986 immigration overhaul helped an estimated 2.5 million immigrants win permanent residency.
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