Progressives in Congress Reject Sen. Manchin’s Demands

After a tumultuous week in Congress, during which deep divisions in the Democratic Party delayed progress on part of President Biden’s economic agenda, debate spilled over into the weekend as the party braced for intense negotiations in the weeks ahead.

Progressives on Sunday flatly rejected the latest demands from Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a key swing vote for Democrats, to shrink President Biden’s domestic policy agenda by more than half and to insert a provision to ensure that the federal government does not fund abortions.

Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington and the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that progressives would not agree to reduce Mr. Biden’s 10-year, $3.5 trillion social safety net and climate bill to $1.5 trillion, as Mr. Manchin requested.

“That’s not going to happen,” Ms. Jayapal said on “State of the Union” on CNN. “That’s too small to get our priorities in. It’s going to be somewhere between $1.5 and $3.5, and I think the White House is working on that right now. Remember: What we want to deliver is child care, paid leave, climate change.”

Mr. Manchin said in an interview with National Review last week that he was insisting that the legislation include the Hyde Amendment, which states that Medicaid will not pay for an abortion unless the woman’s life is in danger or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

The Hyde Amendment has been reauthorized every year since 1976, but Mr. Biden did not include it in his latest budget proposal. During the presidential race, his campaign initially said he supported the amendment, but he later reversed course and condemned it.

Ms. Jayapal, who was one of three members of Congress who testified last week about their personal experiences of having an abortion, said she opposed Mr. Manchin’s demand.

“The Hyde Amendment is something the majority of the country does not support,” she said.

However, Ms. Jayapal and other progressives said they were willing to compromise on the package’s price tag. Several said they were discussing whether to cut certain programs from their agenda entirely or to reduce the duration of the bill’s funding — to five years from 10 years, for example.

“We can front-load the benefits and have less years,” Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Ms. Jayapal said that progressives were willing to explore shortening the length of some components of the funding bill to decrease its cost, but that new clean energy standards needed to stay in the legislation for a decade.

“It takes time to cut carbon emissions,” she said.

Debate has raged on Capitol Hill over the past week over Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda. The nearly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus blocked a House vote on his $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which is favored by the Democrats’ centrist wing. The more liberal lawmakers sought leverage to secure passage of the president’s larger $3.5 trillion domestic policy bill, which some centrist Democrats have not endorsed.

With slim majorities in both chambers of Congress, nearly every Democratic vote is needed to…