Former Sen. Joe Manchin’s new memoir reveals that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) struck a secret written deal with him in 2021 to cap former President Joe Biden’s signature spending plan at $1.5 trillion, an agreement Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) discovered months later that left her “furious” and exposed deep fissures among Democratic leadership.
The Washington Examiner obtained a copy of Manchin’s book, Dead Center: In Defense of Common Sense, before its release on Sept. 16.
In the book, Manchin, the Democrat-turned-independent, recounts how he and Schumer quietly signed the document in July 2021, separating the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law from the Build Back Better Act and capping the social spending bill far below the $3.5 trillion progressive Democrats were demanding. He says Schumer personally asked him to keep it quiet.
“I explained that Schumer had asked me not to talk about the deal, a request by which I had abided,” Manchin writes.
Under heavy pressure from her left flank, Pelosi did not learn of the pact until Sept. 29, 2021, when it surfaced during the annual Congressional Baseball Game. Manchin reveals she called him immediately. “Joe, I had no idea that Schumer made such a deal,” Pelosi told him, “obviously furious,” Manchin writes. He responded: “But Nancy, I am more surprised than you are that he didn’t tell you about it.”
The book includes a signed copy of the agreement, showing that Manchin and Schumer privately struck a July 2021 deal capping the reconciliation bill at $1.5 trillion, with strict tax hikes, spending guardrails, and a pledge from Manchin to support the bill only if those conditions were met, a deal that shaped the Build Back Better fight by forcing Democrats to split Biden’s agenda into a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a separate social-spending bill.
The revelation not only strained trust between the top Democrats but also hardened Manchin’s stance against Build Back Better.
“Why go to the trouble of striking a secret written agreement with the majority leader limiting the bill’s outlay if I foresaw any circumstance under which I’d agree to a number more than twice as high?” he writes.
Schumer and Pelosi’s offices did not respond to a request for comment on the revelations in the book.
Build Back Better collapsed under the weight of those divisions, never passing Congress despite months of negotiations. Biden and Manchin then worked together in secret to craft a smaller $700 billion bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, which became the centerpiece of Biden’s domestic agenda. President Donald Trump has already moved to roll back key portions of the law.
Manchin’s memoir also describes tense private confrontations with Biden, who was president at the time. In one Oval Office meeting, he told the president, “Mr. President, this isn’t your legislation. It’s Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren’s.” He warned that passing Build Back Better would permanently change the American psyche to ask, “What more can my country do for me?” Biden, he recalls, grabbed his arm and told him, “Joe, the country needs you.” Manchin says he replied, “Mr. President, the country needs you, too.”
Pelosi emerges again in Manchin’s telling as exasperated by Biden’s inability to corral progressive Democrats into backing the bipartisan infrastructure bill. He recalls her telling him that Biden had walked out of a key meeting without even asking members to vote for it.
“I had the meeting set up,” Pelosi told him, according to the book. “All the president had to do was ask for their support, but he didn’t.”
Beyond leadership, Manchin directs scathing criticism at his Democratic colleagues. He says many senators privately agreed with his concerns about the costs of Build Back Better but were “too afraid of the party’s loudest voices to say so.”
“That’s not leadership, that’s cowardice — and it’s got to stop,” he writes. He is especially blistering toward progressive House Democrats, accusing them of holding the bipartisan infrastructure bill “hostage” to force his hand on trillions in new social spending through Build Back Better.
The criticism extends beyond personalities. Manchin argues the Democratic Party has lost touch with its roots and abandoned work and opportunity for what he sees as a culture of dependency.
“Democrats used to stand for helping people lift themselves up through hard work and opportunity,” he writes. “Unfortunately, it shifted toward supporting and enabling people who are capable of working but don’t.”
He says the party has strayed so far leftward that if it wants socialism, it should “elect more Bernie Sanderses and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes” rather than expect centrists like him to go along.
Manchin also recounts his standoff with his party over the Senate filibuster, resisting calls from Biden and top Democrats to weaken the 60-vote threshold to pass voting rights legislation. At one point, he says, Biden called him directly to urge him to support a filibuster carve-out. Manchin told the president he couldn’t agree, warning that while he backed the bills themselves, changing the rules would “destroy the Senate.”
Activists staged protests outside his office, and civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King III, warned that “history will not remember them kindly.” Manchin shrugs off the criticism, arguing that Democrats were trying to change the rules of the game simply to get their way. He describes his position as one of principle, insisting that gutting the filibuster would have further polarized the country and permanently damaged the chamber’s bipartisan foundation.
That defense of the filibuster resurfaced in Manchin’s farewell speech on the Senate floor before his retirement in December.
“I have worked and I believe with every bone in my body, every fiber in me, and every ounce of blood that I have, to preserve the bipartisan foundation of the Senate, and that’s the 60-vote threshold of the filibuster,” he told more than 30 colleagues who gathered to hear him speak for the final time. He pointed to bipartisan victories that only happened because senators were forced to come together. “These were bills that just made common sense, and when each side could take a little step to find common ground, powerful things happen.”
MANCHIN’S MEMOIR: FORMER SENATOR DETAILS HIS ‘DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE’ IN NEW BOOK
Manchin’s parting shot in his memoir mirrors the defiant stance that defined his career: a lawmaker willing to buck his party, frustrate presidents, and derail the Democratic agenda, all while insisting he was saving both his state and the Senate from Washington’s excesses.
“The Democratic Party I knew no longer exists,” he writes. “The loudest voices on the far Left drowned out common sense, and my party let them.”