Manchin says he ‘cannot vote’ for Democrats’ $2T spending package
WASHINGTON » Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., on Sunday said that he could not support Democrats’ roughly $2 trillion bill to overhaul the country’s health care, education, climate, immigration and tax laws, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the final piece of President Biden’s economic agenda.
The statement of opposition amounted to the most forceful condemnation yet from the Democratic holdout, who cited rising consumer prices, a growing federal debt and the arrival of a new coronavirus variant as reasons he could not supply his must-have vote to help his own party adopt its signature spending package.
It quickly drew a swift, strong and rare rebuke from the White House, which slammed Manchin for reversing course.
The chain of events began Sunday morning when Manchin said on “Fox News Sunday” that “I can’t move forward. I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation, I just can’t.”
“I tried everything humanly possible,” he added. “I can’t get there . ... This is a no.”
The comments appeared to come as a shock to the Biden administration after days of intense negotiations between the president and Manchin. In a lengthy rebuttal, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the senator’s remarks appeared to be “at odds with his discussions this week with the President, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances.”
“If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate,” she said.
Manchin’s stalwart refusal nonetheless appeared to amount to a political death blow for the bill, known as the Build Back Better Act, at least in its current form. Without his support, Senate Democrats cannot move the sprawling measure through the narrowly divided chamber even using the process known as reconciliation, an intricate legislative tactic that allows the party to bypass a guaranteed Republican filibuster.
Biden had sought to assuage Manchin’s concerns in recent days, speaking privately with the West Virginia Democrat in an attempt to win his vote. The talks marked a last-ditch effort in the waning hours of the year to dislodge a longdelayed measure that aims to expand Medicare benefits, authorize pre-kindergarten for all American children, invest new sums to combat climate change and provide a slew of new financial support to help lowincome Americans.
But talks quickly stalled, as Manchin continued to demand significant changes to the size and scope of the spending package, threatening the ability of Democrats to deliver on many of the promises they made on the 2020 campaign trail. The stalemate ultimately left party leaders no choice but to abandon their plan to hold a vote on the bill before Christmas, a move that meant lawmakers could not act in time to extend a soonto-expire federal program that provides payments to more than 35 million American families with children.