“This is a no on this piece of legislation. I have tried everything I know to do,” he said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
Joe Manchin declared Sunday that he could not support President Joe Biden’s sweeping social and climate spending bill, striking a decisive blow to Democrats’ agenda.
The West Virginia Democrat bluntly said he is a “no” on the $1.7 trillion in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
“If I can’t go home and explain to the people of West Virginia, I can’t vote for it. And I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there,” Manchin said. “This is a no on this piece of legislation. I have tried everything I know to do.”
In announcing his opposition, Manchin raised the same concerns about the bill that he’s had all along: inflation, rising debt and a mismatch between the package’s 10-year funding and its shorter-term programs. But until Sunday, Manchin had never taken a hard line on the legislation. In the past week, he’s spoken directly to Biden several times, with the president and other Democrats furiously lobbying him to support the bill.
With an evenly split Senate, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer needs every Democrat to go along with the legislation, which only requires a simple majority vote. That dynamic gives Manchin enormous leverage over Biden’s agenda, allowing him to single-handedly sink a priority that Democrats have spent much of the year working on.
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West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin says he cannot support President Joe Biden’s sweeping social and climate spending bill, dooming the House-passed version of the bill and putting the rest of Biden’s agenda in jeopardy https://t.co/visOqGSyhE
— POLITICO (@politico) December 19, 2021Quite the quote from Joe Manchin, in new statement:
"My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more
vulnerable to the threats we face.”— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) December 19, 2021
Reminder, Manchin and Schumer signed an agreement in July, then Democrats spent five months disregarding every provision of it and somehow thinking they could bully Manchin into going along. pic.twitter.com/oRKn6zZJWd
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) December 19, 2021
I’m not a fan of spending spree bills, so in some ways I agree with Manchin — it’s a lot of spending. But my question is, where will the money really go and who is going to monitor the spending? I believe it will be like most spending measures — throwing a lot of money around with no real benefit realized. I’m thinking about the stimulus measures passed during the Obama administration. Remember Solyndra? This spending does nothing because most of it ends up down the rabbit hole. Fraud, waste, mismanagement and even downright thievery are hallmarks of these spending measures. If the bill would provide for monitoring of the spending, maybe I’d go for it. But it won’t. We will be spending money we don’t really have.
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