Ron Klain recounts ‘blowup’ with Manchin, who thought ‘we had violated the deal’
Ryan King
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Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain opened up about the Biden administration‘s “blowup” with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) during negotiations for a social spending spree.
Klain, who departed his post after President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this month, conceded that he bore some responsibility for the frayed tensions with Manchin, the linchpin vote in the Senate, during tense deliberations with him.
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“At the end of 2021, obviously, we had a blowup with him where we thought we had a deal, and he kind of thought we had violated the deal, and it was super complicated. It obviously wound up in a very bad place, and I bear some responsibility for that,” Klain told the New Yorker in a lengthy exit interview.
Biden had been desperate for a political win and under pressure from liberals to deliver the goods in his quest for his so-called “Build Back Better” agenda that would funnel more federal dollars to healthcare, the environment, and child care, among other initiatives.
Iterations of the concept ranged from roughly $1.5 trillion to $6 trillion, depending on the estimate. Over time, Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) tanked various forms of the legislation and whittled down its scope and scale, much to the ire of progressives. By February 2022, Manchin deemed the bill “dead.”
He had a litany of concerns ranging from inflation to some of the funding mechanisms proposed for the bill. Democrats knocked him for bucking them, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) put a version of the bill on the floor to force him to diverge from the party publicly.
“I got frustrated with where we were, and we felt a need to take some shots at him. He was taking some shots at us. Nothing was too mean or too personal, but it certainly didn’t help,” Klain added.
Manchin publicly pinned the blame for collapsed negotiations on the White House staff, which he said “put some things out that were absolutely inexcusable.”
Later, Klain had a “kiss-and-make-up moment” with Manchin and sought to “find the middle ground that he could get to.”
“Gina Raimondo cooked us dinner. It was delicious. But, more importantly, him and I had some reconciliation,” Klain recounted. “Credit to him for being willing to come back to the table, willing to find something. But it was a long and slow process.”
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By late July, Manchin announced support for the roughly $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act, and Sinema later hopped on board.
“What we wanted was success. It was clear to us that the best way to get success was to have Sen. Manchin and Sen. Schumer work together. We worked behind the scenes to try to narrow gaps, to kind of provide solutions, technical assistance, advice. But credit goes to Sen. Manchin and Sen. Schumer,” Klain said.