Sen. Joe Manchin says no to $2T bill: ‘I can’t vote for it’

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said Sunday helium cannot backmost a $2 trillion societal information nett bill, dealing a perchance fatal stroke to President Joe Biden’s signature legislation.

Manchin told “Fox News Sunday” that helium ever has made wide helium had reservations astir the authorities and that now, aft five-and-half months of discussions and negotiations, “I cannot ballot to proceed with this portion of legislation.”

The West Virginia legislator cited a multitude of factors weighing connected the system and the imaginable harm helium saw from pushing done the “mammoth” bill, specified arsenic persistent inflation, a increasing indebtedness and the latest menace from the omicron variant.

“When you person these things coming astatine you the mode they are close now, I’ve ever said this … if I can’t spell location and explicate it to the radical of vest Virginia, I can’t ballot for it,” helium said.

“I tried everything humanly possible. I can’t bash it,” helium said. “This is simply a nary connected this legislation. I person tried everything I cognize to do.”

Last week, Biden each but acknowledged that negotiations implicit his sweeping home argumentation bundle would apt propulsion into the caller twelvemonth amid Manchin’s unyielding opposition. But the president had insisted that Manchin reiterated his enactment for a model that the senator, the White House and different Democrats had agreed to for the flagship bill.

On Sunday, Manchin made wide those were Biden’s words, not his own.