Joe Manchin said Wednesday that he’s sure his party’s impending infrastructure bill is going to be “enormous” – and that he wants to pay for it with tax hikes. This may actually put the Democrats’ most conservative senator to the left of Biden.
Joe Manchin is an odd Democrat. This is true in a banal sense, in that the West Virginia senator is far more conservative than the median member of his party on a whole host of issues. At present, Manchin is directly blocking the passage of progressive gun safety, voting rights, and minimum wage bills, and indirectly obstructing just about every other item on President Biden’s agenda, by opposing substantial reforms to the legislative filibuster. But on infrastructure, Manchin is a different kind of strange. Whenever the subject comes up, the man’s mood grows lighter, his eyes grow wider, and a wee bit of socialism creeps into his heart. Manchin has a keen appreciation for how important the New Deal’s public-works projects were to his region’s development, and how much his constituents stand to benefit from federal investment in rural broadband, roads, and bridges. For months now, he’s been touting his interest in a “$4 trillion” infrastructure bill — a figure markedly higher than any Biden floated on the campaign trail or since. In an interview with the Bipartisan Policy Center in February, Manchin likened the scale of his desired infrastructure package to that of the New Deal or Dwight Eisenhower’s federal highway bill. At the time, it was unclear how seriously to take Manchin’s pronouncements; in the very same interview, the senator expressed reservations about the American Rescue Plan’s $1.9 trillion price tag. Meanwhile, Manchin was insisting that Democrats take a bipartisan approach to the infrastructure package.
