Why does it matter if the bill passes in January instead of December?

Were the elves going to get a well-deserved raise courtesy of Build Back Better? Maybe a federal elf stimulus?

There is a fundamental difference in how Manchin wants to fund the bill vs. how other Democrats want to fund it. He doesn't want a six-year funding mechanism that can get blown away by Republicans if they take control of government spending again. He wants any program funding to be for 10 years to etch that funding in stone and make it much harder to roll stuff back.

The problem with that is that the child credit alone will cost the full amount of the bill under Manchin's suggestion. So they're haggling.

Pretty normal stuff.

Overall, what he's asking for is fewer programs but give them permanence, as opposed to a bunch of stuff that can all get sliced away by future Republican politicians.

And of course, there'd be less to haggle over if Mr. EpiPen/Coal Corruption didn't slice the original number down in the first place.

But guess what? Dems have 50 senators. Make it 53 and we don't go through this kind of shit.

I'm no Manchin fan - which I have made clear in my own stories on him - but in this particular case there is actually some merit to his argument. I'm not saying he's right - I actually don't know. I'm not an expert, and neither are you.

The bottom line is that this is a complex bill from a funding perspective. Democrats need to spend less time throwing each other under the bus and more time spreading the word about how important the changes are.

It's not like Biden and company are sitting idle, either. His recent post-storm gifts to Kentucky and today's announcement of the FDA's approval of an abortion pill by mail are just the most recent examples.