4/10/21
President Ronald Reagan had a favorite joke he loved to tell about twin boys, one perennially pessimistic and one perennially optimistic. In an attempt to dampen the latter child’s sunny outlook, a psychiatrist brought the child to a room piled high with manure. Delighted, the little boy started frantically digging. So, the shrink asks, “What do you think you’re doing?” The boy, brimming with his characteristic optimism, replied, “With all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere!” That punchline makes me think of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who has become a one-man roadblock to President Biden’s policy agenda on Capitol Hill because he insists that a pony named bipartisanship is stalking the halls of Congress just waiting to be found. And in his effort to find it, Manchin lowered the boom on abolishing or reforming the filibuster. “There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster,” Manchin wrote in an op-ed in The Post this past week. He’s not a fan of the budget reconciliation process either. “I simply do not believe budget reconciliation should replace regular order in the Senate,” Manchin continued. “Working legislation through regular order in the Senate prevents drastic swings in federal policymaking.” Regular order? Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.) said on Friday; “In the 10 years I served, we never had regular order.”
Manchin went on to say he wants to “usher a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground on the major policy debates facing our nation.” Bipartisanship with the party of Donald Trump? Common ground with many of the same people who voted against the certification of the electoral college vote after insurrectionists invaded the Capitol to try to overturn the presidential election? For real? Well, it’s time for the gentleman from West Virginia to show us what he’s for and with whom he’s working among Republicans to create this legislative nirvana he talks so much about. Manchin’s overall goal is right: getting Congress back in the business of solving problems instead of allowing its inaction to make them worse. If, despite his efforts, Republicans remain recalcitrant or put forward proposals they know will be rejected by the president, then Manchin must leave them be. The American people and the Democratic Party base in particular want results, and inaction puts the razor-thin Democratic majority in the Senate at risk. Surely, Manchin wouldn’t want to be blamed for his party losing that majority because he spent more time looking for a pony that doesn’t exist than dealing with the reality of the pile of work right in front of him.