Moderate senator could derail Biden’s spending plan

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Sunday the federal government has already pumped more than $5 trillion dollars into the economy since the start of the pandemic, and now is not the time to spend more. “You have 11 million jobs that aren’t filled right now, 8 million people are still unemployed,” he said on CNN’s State of the Union. “Something's not matching up. Don’t you think we ought to hit pause and find out?”

What happens now? In the evenly divided Senate, Democrats cannot pass the spending package without Manchin’s vote. He said he might support a spending plan in the $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion dollar range, but definitely not the $3.5 trillion President Joe Biden has requested. He also said while he supports raising corporate taxes to a degree, he’s concerned the tax hikes as outlined in the proposal would make the United States less globally competitive.

Dig deeper: Read Harvest Prude’s report in The Stew about Manchin’s political power in the Senate.