Spending Bill To Be Scaled Back In Order To Be Passed

spending bill
spending bill

It has been assumed that the only way to pass Joe Biden’s spending bill would be through narrowing the budget in itself- which might secure Manchin’s support. Manchin has effectively killed a bill that would have been more wide-ranging, referred to as the Build Back Better Act, on Sunday, when he announced his opposition to the idea- which naturally angered and disappointed the White House as well as his fellow congressional Democrats.

A few days later, while the pain still remains, most of the Democrats have been actively looking for solutions that could find some support from the conservative senator of West Virginia, whose vote is an absolute necessity with the Senate divided quite evenly. 

Reducing The Spending Bill Is The Only Way Forward

Several Democratic legislators, experts, and lobbyists have been wondering if Joe Manchin could be won over if the spending bill was revised to bring forth fewer programs for a far longer period of time. Ben Ritz, the director of the Center for Funding America’s Future at the Progressive Policy Institute, believes that the only way forward would be through advocating a bill with fewer items.

And as it stands, a large section of the party is coming round to that. Some of the Democrats, in fact, believe that they did make a mistake in going too large in the first place itself. 

Progressive had initially set up the spending bill at a budget of $6 trillion before they fell down to $3.5 trillion- in part to signify that the cut was a concession on their party. The lower figure, too, proved a tad bit high for conservative Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, and the House ultimately decided to pass a roughly $2 trillion version of the spending plan of Biden in November. 

Senator Joe Manchin has argued that the Democrats haven’t been entirely honest about the cost of the spending bill