Manchin: I will not vote for a $ 3.5 trillion bill

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By Daniella Diaz, CNN

Democratic Senator Joe manchin said on Sunday that he would not support the Price of $ 3.5 trillion for the economy bill it would expand the nation’s social safety net and that “there is no way” Congress could meet the deadline set by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to pass it.

“(Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer) won’t get my $ 3.5 trillion vote and Chuck knows it, and we’ve talked about it,” West Virginia Senator told CNN’s Dana Bash on “The State of the Union”.

“We have already disbursed $ 5.4 trillion and we have tried to help Americans in any way we can and a lot of the help we have provided is still there and will be clear until next year. , 2022, so what’s the emergency? What’s the emergency we have? It’s not the same emergency we had with the US bailout. We took it out quickly. It was about 2,000 billions of dollars.

The spending bill proposed by President Joe Biden and his allies in Congress spreads spending over 10 years, as opposed to the Covid stimulus packages Manchin was referring to, which were more immediate cash injections.

Manchin pours cold water on Pelosi’s timeline

Manchin said he wanted to slow down the schedule, as he suggested in his Wall Street Journal editorial earlier this month, to see where the payments for the Covid-19 stimulus bill are going and what areas to target to extend the social safety net.

“So we’ve done a lot of things, and there are still a lot of people who need help, but there are still 11 million jobs that are unfilled right now. Eight million people are still unemployed. Something is wrong. Don’t you think we should take a break and find out? The vulnerability that we have right now, we don’t know what happened with this Covid, it’s awful to come back as it is with vengeance, ”he said. “We don’t know what inflation is, we know it’s rampant right now, I can tell you that in West Virginia inflation is rampant, and on top of that, the challenges we’re going to have , geopolitical challenges, shouldn’t we be ready?

He added that he did not believe that the adoption of the economic bill before the September 27 deadline set by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could be made.

“There is no way to do this by the 27th if we do our job,” he said. “There are so many differences that we have here and so much, there is so much outside of us how far we are, I’m giving you different things, I’ve talked, I’ve worked with people , I’m going to talk to people, it doesn’t make sense, ”he said.

Pelosi nodded last month to moderate Democrats and agreed to hold a vote by Sept. 27 on the infrastructure bill. But if the reconciliation proposal has not been passed by the Senate by then, it is not clear whether they would have the votes to pass the infrastructure bill and send it to Biden’s office. .

How to pay the bill

Asked by Bash how he would foot the economic bill, Manchin replied that he was in favor of increasing corporate taxes, saying: “I want to increase corporate taxes, I’ve spoken to people. corporations, I want the rich to pay their fair share. “

The senator also suggested he wanted to see the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed as soon as possible, saying there was an urgent need for lawmakers to address the problem, which has been “left unattended for over 30 years. “.

“This is the one the president came out on and campaigned on, this is his bill – we worked on it in a bipartisan way, got 19 Republicans to vote, this is the bill that should come out immediately, ”he said.

This story was updated with additional details on Sunday.

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