Pelosi optimistic about spending bills, Manchin unsure about billionaire tax

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told colleagues Wednesday that Democrats are in “pretty good shape” in negotiations on President Joe Biden’s spending bills, though Senator Joe Manchin appeared hesitant on supporting a proposed billionaire tax to help pay for it. The disconnect comes just days ahead of a self-imposed deadline to get a deal done by the end of the month.

The proposed new tax would hit the gains of those with more than $1 billion in assets or incomes of more than $100 million a year. Sen. Manchin said he prefers a minimum 15% flat “patriotic tax” to ensure billionaires don’t skip out on paying any taxes while helping to fund Biden’s spending bills.

“There’s a patriotic duty that you should be paying something to this great country,” Manchin said. However, he also said he didn’t like the idea of “targeting” the wealthy.

“People in the stratosphere, rather than trying to penalize, we ought to be pleased that this country is able to produce the wealth,” Manchin told reporters ahead of a meeting between him, fellow Democratic centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and White House officials. Despite his hangup over a billionaire tax to help pay for the spending bills, Manchin added “we need to move forward — the president has made that very clear — he wants to move forward and we owe it to the president to move forward”.

While Democrats work to come up with the roughly $1.75 trillion to pay for the larger spending bill, that’s not the only variable during negotiations. Other main holdups include:

• Federal paid leave
• Medicare benefits
• Prescription drug pricing
• Closing the Medicaid gap 

There’s a Sunday deadline to approve the smaller, bipartisan roads-and-bridges infrastructure bill. If that bill doesn’t get signed into law, the government risks allowing funds for routine transportation programs to expire. The bill has been held up by progressive lawmakers who are refusing to give their support without the bigger Biden deal.

Pelosi had previously said the two bills had to be passed together, but that did not appear to be the case as of Tuesday. However, Pelosi reiterated in order for the House to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Democrats need to have “the trust, the confidence and the reality” in Biden’s broader package.