Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Alex | Email Max As the Biden administration looks over the cadaver that is their Build Back Better agenda, wondering what components, if any, it can resuscitate, one particular question vexes administration officials. Could they have ended up in a better place had the framing around the legislation been any different? The answer, among Democrats, is “likely, no." In light of failure to pass far-reaching legislation, it’s always convenient to blame communications missteps when other political factors did the trick. That said, inside the White House there is a sense that their push was hurt — materially so — by the media’s description of Build Back Better as a “social spending” bill and not an economic one. The legislation does contain components that would have immense impacts on society: from expanded access to health insurance, to opening up avenues for free education, to historic investments in climate change and the lowering of prescription drug costs. For that reason, the shorthand descriptor of “social spending” has been used across the media ecosystem, including in this very outlet you’re reading right now. But the White House has long argued that the Build Back Better initiative is about economic stabilization; that the point of the bill was to make it so families could get to work more easily, have less anxiety about the care of their children, and access the tools and education that would place them more firmly in the job market. The bill was constructed off Biden’s American Families Plan, which, while less about economic “recovery,” was pitched as "an investment in our kids, our families, and our economic future." The Fourth Estate’s decision to present all this under the rubric of social welfare, they contend, has hurt the bill politically. “The president’s economic growth agenda has always been about rebuilding our infrastructure, our manufacturing and our workforce here at home across the board,” said a senior White House official. “The collective decision of the media to describe this as ‘massive social spending,’ or ‘social welfare,’ reflects the exact problems that have held our economy back for so long, and also problematically suggests that hard-working women are some kind of charity case rather than a true engine of our economy.” How much actual damage the framing of Build Back Better as a social spending bill did with respect to its passage is inherently impossible to quantify. Certainly, a number of other factors seemed to play prominent roles. The president’s falling approval rating has weakened his bully pulpit; the decision to break off and pass the bill’s infrastructure components sapped momentum for passage of the rest of the package; the persistently high inflation has compelled lawmakers to hit pause on a nearly $2 trillion package; and, more to the point, Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) never was actually on board with the specifics of any deal. But Manchin’s own utterances have revealed that the bill’s perception as a “social spending” measure worsened its political salience. A few weeks ago, the West Virginia Democrat was asked about his views of legislation to help parents afford childcare in the midst of record inflation. “I want nothing to do with that, ok? Nothing at all,” he responded . “These are all social issues. They should go through committee” And in surveys following TERRY MCAULIFFE’s surprise loss in the Virginia gubernatorial election, Democratic pollsters warned that the party was suffering from a perception problem directly relevant to this debate. “Voters think we are focused on social issues, not the economy,” wrote BRIAN STRYKER, a Democratic pollster . “They aren’t hearing us talk about the economy enough, and the things they are hearing about our agenda (people mentioned the child tax credit, paid leave, free college) don’t have to do with getting people back to work or taking on the cost of goods. That’s deadly in an environment when it’s the top issue.” The absence of legislative action on BBB has already had real-world impacts. A Columbia research survey found that the monthly child poverty rate had increased from 12.1 percent in December to 17 percent in January — the same period in which the enhanced child tax credit that Democrats had wanted to extend further through the bill had lapsed. The answer, from inside the White House, has been to try and engineer a framing shift: to continue to argue that Build Back Better could help with inflation by tackling the biggest cost drivers that families face; and that it would lock in the economic gains made over the past year. "We are still pursuing several critical investments in our economy and our people, through child care and many other issues,” senior adviser to the president, GENE SPERLING, told ADAM CANCRYN, this week. “"We're continuing to push our policy goals and hope that we're able to get crucial ones over the line, but I'm not going to try to predict at this point. We all know the challenges" TEXT US — Are you KURT CAMPBELL, the Asia Coordinator at the National Security Council? We want to hear from you and we’ll keep you anonymous. Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com or you can text/Signal/Wickr Alex at 8183240098 or Max at 7143455427.
| 
