Sen. Joe Manchin confirmed Sunday that he will not vote for President Biden’s $ 3.5 trillion spending plan that will drastically reform the nation’s social security network, prompting Sen. Bernie Sanders to remove the decision as “unacceptable.”
Manchin (D-WV), who has a key vote in the narrowly divided Senate, was asked CNN’s “State of the Union.” on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who said he will move forward “at full speed” with the package.
“She will not have my vote for $ 3.5 [trillion] and Chuck knows it, and we talked about it, ”he replied. “It won’t be $ 3.5, I can assure you.”
In another interview Sunday, Manchin wondered why Democrats were pushing legislation in the Senate at such a dizzying pace.
“We don’t have the need to rush into that and do it in a week because there’s some deadline we meet or someone will fall through the cracks,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press”.
“I want to make sure that the children are taken care of, that people basically have the opportunity to go back to work. We have 11 million jobs that we haven’t covered, 8 million people are still unemployed. There’s something that doesn’t match up there, ”he said.
Sanders (I-Vt.) Appeared on CNN after Manchin and attacked the West Virginia lawmaker for leaving the ceiling so low.
“No, it is not absolutely acceptable to me. I don’t think it’s acceptable to the president, to the American people, or to the vast majority of the people in the Democratic Caucus, “Sanders told host Dana Bash.
“It’s a consistent bill, it’s hard to put together a bill like this. In the end, I think we’ll do it,” Sanders said.
The huge $ 3.5 trillion ten-year plan would address several of Biden’s priorities, such as education, climate change and immigration reform, while expanding the social safety net.
Manchin urged Schumer (D-NY) to slow down and give lawmakers more time to discuss the spending bill and how it will be funded.
“Don’t you think we should pause and discover the vulnerability we have right now?” he told CNN. “We do not know what happened to this COVID. It’s horrible, to come back with revenge. We don’t know about inflation. We know it’s spreading right now. I can tell you about West Virginia inflation. And besides, the challenges we will have (geopolitical challenges) shouldn’t we be prepared? ”
Sanders said he is willing to give lawmakers more time to discuss the package, but insisted time is running out.
“But there is a sense of urgency. And the sense of urgency is that we live today in a country where richer people and larger corporations are making a phenomenal phenomenon, while the working class is struggling across this country in terms of health care. You have 90 million uninsured or underinsured people, ”he said.
Manchin, who wrote a publication in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month, explaining his opposition, also suggested that the price of the legislation be lowered to about $ 1.5 trillion.
He said he had concerns about raising taxes to pay the package because he believed former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts in 2017 were “weighted for the rich.”
“If we have a competitive tax code (non-competitive, it doesn’t help the working person that was done in 2017), that is, at $ 1 [trillion], 1.5 USD [trillion] range, OK, that’s where it is. You shouldn’t look at it, what is needed now to meet the urgent needs we have that we haven’t yet met? ” he said.
For the spending package to go through the reconciliation process in the Senate divided between 50 and 50, the 50 Democratic senators would have to approve it.
Vice President Kamala Harris would act as the tiebreaker.
No Republican is expected to approve it.