Biden Tries to Salvage Domestic Policy Bill After Rift With Manchin

When word leaked the next day that Mr. Manchin did not support the child tax credit as written — a cornerstone of the plan and a priority for most Democrats — Mr. Manchin was furious and snapped at Capitol Hill reporters, offering a profane denial that he wanted to remove the child tax credit provision entirely.

And by Thursday, Mr. Biden directly named Mr. Manchin in a statement conceding that negotiations would slip in 2022, though he expressed optimism that the pair would resolve their differences. Steve Clemons, a longtime Washington journalist who is close to Mr. Manchin, later wrote in The Hill, a political news website, that the senator was furious with the tone of the Thursday statement, viewing it as blaming Mr. Manchin alone for blocking the legislation.

Mr. Manchin’s office declined to comment. But by Friday, the senator had scheduled the appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” where he declared that he was no longer interested in negotiating.

On Monday morning, a few hours after speaking with the president, Mr. Manchin offered an unsparing critique of the efforts by the Biden administration and senior Democrats on Capitol Hill to pass the spending bill in a 14-minute interview with a local West Virginia broadcaster.

Mr. Manchin directly faulted the White House staff and top Democrats for what he described as a misplaced assumption that he could be pressured into accepting such a large package. And he said that over months of negotiations, the president and his allies failed to adequately respond to his concerns and sufficiently cut down the scope and size of the measure.

“I knew where they were and I knew what they could and could not do — they just never realized it because they figured, surely to God we can move one person,” Mr. Manchin said. “Surely we can badger and beat one person up, surely we can get enough protesters to make that person uncomfortable enough they’ll just say, ‘OK, I’ll vote for anything, just quit.’”

Despite Monday’s efforts by the White House, it appeared hard to overstate the ill will that was created by Mr. Manchin’s decision to reject a plan already heavily curtailed in hopes of satisfying his concerns. Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, warned that “no one should think that we are going to be satisfied with an even smaller package.”