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‘THAT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN’: JAYAPAL REJECTS MANCHIN’S $1.5T
PRICE TAG FOR BIDEN’S SPENDING PLAN  
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Quint Forgey
October 3, 2021
Politico
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_ Progressives have expressed reluctance to scale back their package.
_

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks with reporters Friday after a
meeting of progressive House Democrats on Capitol Hill. , Alex
Brandon/AP Photo

 

Rep. Pramila Jayapal expressed openness Sunday to a White House-backed
climate and social spending plan that cost less than $3.5 trillion,
but she firmly rejected Sen. Joe Manchin’s suggested $1.5 trillion
price tag for the massive legislative proposal.

The comments from Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus, come after her progressives successfully delayed a
planned House vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill last Thursday
as they seek further commitments from their moderate colleagues on
President Joe Biden’s spending plan.

House moderates, however, are pushing for an immediate vote on the
infrastructure bill — which cleared the Senate in August — and
attempting to decouple that legislation from Biden’s
multitrillion-dollar spending plan. Congressional Democrats previously
had set Sept. 27 as a deadline for final passage of the infrastructure
bill.

Emboldening House moderates, Manchin (D-W.Va.) expressed new
reluctance last Wednesday to the spending plan’s $3.5 trillion price
tag, which was agreed upon this summer by Senate Democratic leadership
and the White House. POLITICO reported last Thursday that Manchin
proposed a deal to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in July that
would limit the total cost of the legislation to $1.5 trillion.

Asked whether House progressives could get behind Manchin’s $1.5
trillion proposal, Jayapal told CNN’s “State of the Union” on
Sunday, “That’s not going to happen.” The figure put forth by
Manchin is “too small to get our priorities in,” she added,
predicting the final cost of the spending plan would “be somewhere
between 1.5 and 3.5” trillion dollars.

But Jayapal offered few other details about what exact number House
progressives would ultimately accept and instead stressed that debate
over the spending plan has “never been about the price tag. It’s
about what we want to deliver.”

“We’re not thinking about the number,” she said. “And the
president said this to us, too. He said, ‘Don’t start with the
number. Start with what you’re for.’ And that's what he’s asked
them for. And then, let’s come to the number from there. So,
that’s how we’re thinking about it.”

On a trip to Capitol Hill on Friday, Biden braced House progressives
to accept a significantly curtailed spending plan that could
ultimately cost between $1.9 trillion and $2.3 trillion. “I wrote
the damn bill. … Even a smaller bill can make historic investments
— historic investments in child care, day care, clean energy. You
get a whole hell of a lot of things done,” he told the lawmakers,
POLITICO reported.

READ MORE: PROGRESSIVE LEADER PRAMILA JAYAPAL: I WON’T VOTE FOR
SPENDING BILL THAT INCLUDES HYDE AMENDMENT
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_Quint Forgey is a breaking news reporter for POLITICO._

_Quint previously worked as a digital producer and editorial intern
for POLITICO, a freelancer and news intern for The Wall Street
Journal, an associate producer for Louisiana Public Broadcasting, a
reporting intern for The News Journal in Delaware, and a national
reporting fellow for the Carnegie-Knight News21 program._

_Quint graduated from Louisiana State University, where he served as
editor in chief of the student newspaper, The Daily Reveille._

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