About a month ago, I wrote that the negotiations over the Build Back Better Act would at some point begin to resemble the film Sophie’s Choice. Longtime champions of the bill’s transformative elements would have to fight with one another over whether those elements get to stay or go.
I didn’t realize at the time how precisely that analogy would hold. According to Axios, last week Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) told progressives that they have to choose which program for children would survive in the reconciliation package: the expanded Child Tax Credit, or paid family and medical leave, or universal pre-kindergarten, or child care subsidies for families. This is literally the plot of Sophie’s Choice! Progressives, like Meryl Streep, must pick their favorite child (program) and leave the others to the vicissitudes of the SS officer (who I guess is Manchin in this analogy).
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