Maverick Democratic Senator Throws Cold Water on Biden & Pelosi's Effort to Pass $3.5 Trillion Plan
14:00 GMT 04.09.2021 (Updated: 19:46 GMT 17.10.2022)
© REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque
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Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, opposes Joe Biden's ambitious $3.5 trillion spending plan and has called upon his Senate peers to think twice before passing the new multi-trillion dollar bill. Without Manchin's vote, it will be impossible for Democrats to ram the legislation through the evenly split upper chamber of Congress.
In his 2 September op-ed for The Washington Post, Joe Manchin urged American congressmen to take a "strategic pause" on the $3.5 trillion budget bill, denouncing "artificial political deadlines" aimed at ramming the package through Congress.
"The nation faces an unprecedented array of challenges and will inevitably encounter additional crises in the future," the senator wrote on Thursday. "Yet some in Congress have a strange belief there is an infinite supply of money to deal with any current or future crisis, and that spending trillions upon trillions will have no negative consequence for the future. I disagree."
Over the past 18 months, the US government has spent over $5 trillion responding to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Democratic lawmaker, who warns about the dire consequences of soaring inflation. According to him, "an overheating economy has imposed a costly 'inflation tax' on every middle- and working-class American". He also cited the fact that the nation's debt has reached a record level of $28.7 trillion and keeps growing.
Instead of rushing to spend trillions on new government programs and additional stimulus funding, Congress should hit a strategic pause on the budget-reconciliation legislation. Read my op-ed in @WSJopinion: https://t.co/hlkIpfwVd8
— Senator Joe Manchin (@Sen_JoeManchin) September 2, 2021
Earlier this week, the Democratic senator lashed out at the multi-trillion budget proposal at a West Virginia Chamber of Commerce event, stressing that the country already has "runaway inflation", the coronavirus pandemic and the botched Afghan pull-out on its plate. "I would ask my colleagues and all of the Senate to hit the pause button on the $3.5 [trillion]. Let's sit back. Let's see what happens," Manchin emphasised. He admitted that the Democratic Party is "going to go nuts right now because what I said is going to all my caucus in Washington".
Although Manchin has not completely ruled out voting for the bill, his demarche may force Joe Biden and the Democrats "to scale back [their] ambitions to ink the largest expansion of the US safety net in generations," according to NBC News. To complicate matters further, Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz) has also announced that she opposes the proposed spending level.
Democrats should punish Manchin and Sinema if they aren't going to do anything whatsoever to help Americans, democracy, and Biden's agenda. 2022 is it. Strip them of committees and play hardball until they cry uncle. Biden and Schumer should call them out by name. https://t.co/8VjulFGTUg
— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) September 2, 2021
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rushed to pass the $3.5 trillion bill through the lower chamber along party lines in late August despite Manchin voicing deep concerns about the package. In addition to that, the speaker also rammed HR 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, through the House, completely ignoring the West Virginia senator's amendments to the bill. It appears that these actions have deepened the rift between the party and Manchin.
A reminder: Democrats control the White House & both chambers of Congress.
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) September 2, 2021
In theory, there is nothing stopping them from abolishing the filibuster, codifying Roe, & expanding the court.
In practise, Joe Biden defers to Joe Manchin on the issue of democracy and protecting it.
The Democratic senator has been at odds with his fellow party members for quite a while. Earlier, he refused to support eliminating or weakening the filibuster. He urged Democratic lawmakers to work together with the Republicans on Biden's infrastructure legislation. Similarly, Manchin insisted on the necessity to reconsider gun control laws passed by the House earlier this year. The moderate Democrat told journalists in late March: "I come from a gun culture. I'm a law-abiding gun owner." In April, Manchin sounded the alarm at how the budget reconciliation process was used by his party to stifle debate in the Senate. Manchin's resistance to the Democratic leadership has repeatedly prompted criticism from his party and the US press, which has called the "stubborn" Western Virginia senator "the barrier to progress."
