- Bernie Sanders says Joe Manchin is “deliberately sabotaging” President Biden’s legislative agenda.
- During ABC, Sanders said Manchin does not represent “working families in West Virginia or America.”
- Last week, Manchin threw cold water on the climate and tax plan that Democrats spent weeks negotiating.
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Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday criticized Sen. Joe Manchin after the West Virginia Democrat sank the Democratic-led climate and tax bill that the party had been negotiating for weeks.
Speaking with ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz, the Vermont lawmaker blasted Manchin’s position that he could no longer support the legislation because of his concerns about inflation and said the lawmaker was “sabotaging” President Joe Biden’s agenda.
fAnd he visibly perked up when Raddatz said Manchin had “abruptly” ended talks with Democratic leaders on the bill.
“Senator Joe Manchin, of course, abruptly cut off the Democrats’ plan this week,” Raddatz said before Sanders interjected.
“He didn’t do anything out of the blue,” Sanders said. “He has sabotaged the president’s agenda.
He continued: “If you check the record six months ago, I made it clear that you have people like Manchin and [Arizona Sen. Kyrsten] Movies to a lesser extent that are deliberately sabotaging the president’s agenda, what the American people want, what the majority of us in the Democratic Caucus want. Nothing new about it.”
Sanders then tapped into Manchin’s political fundraising, touting his ties to the energy industry — which has huge influence in West Virginia — and Republican donors.
“This is a guy who is a major recipient of fossil fuel money … a guy who has received campaign contributions from 25 Republican billionaires,” he said.
When Raddatz countered that Manchin said he wanted to act in West Virginia’s best interest, given that inflation last month was up 9.1 percent from a year earlier, Sanders responded, “Indeed do you?
During an interview Friday with West Virginia media Hoppy Kercheval, Manchin said he told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York that he wanted to see inflation data for next month’s July before taking further action. actions on the bill.
“I said, ‘Chuck, until we see the inflation data for July, until we see the Fed rates for July, the interest rates, then let’s wait until that comes out to know that we’re going down a path that’s not going to add more to inflation. Inflation is absolutely killing many, many people,” he said during the interview, pointing to higher food and fuel costs.
Sanders on Sunday was unimpressed with Manchin’s reasoning for the proposed bill.
“The same crap that Manchin has been talking about for a year,” he told Raddatz. “You’re asking the people of West Virginia if they want to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and eyeglasses. Ask the people of West Virginia if all people should have health care as a human right like every other country on Earth. “
“In my humble opinion, Manchin represents the wealthiest people in this country, not working families in West Virginia or America,” he added.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told Politico last week that Manchin can no longer be trusted.
“Senator Manchin said a lot of things,” she expressed. “Every time he makes it clear, over and over again, is that he can’t make a deal and that you can’t believe what he says.”
Last December, Manchin rejected the party’s expansive Build Back Better legislation, which was intended to be a multitrillion-dollar welfare spending bill that would have established universal pre-K, renewed monthly child tax credit payments to families for another year and to deal with climate change, among other provisions.
Democrats tried to push the bill through the reconciliation process, but with Manchin wielding veto power in the evenly divided Senate, he failed the legislation, much to the dismay of Biden and congressional Democrats — even as the White House and party leaders worked to make great concessions to win his support.
On Friday, Biden urged Democrats to pass a softening bill focused on health care provisions and reducing the federal deficit.
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