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Sen. Manchin Responds To Pressure From Dems To Spend More Money

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is going after his party again. During an interview on MSNBC, left-wing host Stephanie Ruhle tried pushing Manchin on why he won’t support radical proposals.

Ruhle kicked the segment off by asking Manchin: “When is the last time you spoke to Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Progressive members of the Senate to work on this?”

After saying he speaks to them every Monday on a conference call, Manchin said: “I am not a liberal by any stretch of the imagination, and not a conservative, ultra-conservative. I tell people, I am fiscally responsible and socially compassionate. Put me anywhere you want in the political spectrum, I am centrist in the middle where most are, pragmatic enough to figure I understand, you identified the need on this side. We have already spent how many trillions of dollars attending to many of the needs. How much more can we afford? You want more debt. I looked this morning, we’re at $28.5 trillion of debt. How much more can we add on and pass on to your children, the next generation? We’ve always said, we’re writing checks our kids can’t cash and it is a shame to put on the burden. Let’s consider that.”

Ruhle then doubled down again and asked about Democrats accusing him of “standing in the way of President Biden’s agenda.”

She was trying to bait Manchin into saying he’d support Democrats’ radical bills, but he didn’t fall for it.

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“I hear from as you said, I hear from everybody, I get attacked from different sides. Also, we get some praise from different sides trying to take a pragmatic, centrist approach. People are concerned about the debt, but nobody is speaking about the debt. We have a tremendous amount of debt that could cause inflation,” Manchin said.

“You understand the financial market and understand it as well as anybody, what we are rocking with here. Let’s get this right. We already put close to $6 trillion out to people. Our economy is coming back, comes roaring back,” he added.

“Now we’re not able to meet demand by supplying what the economy wants. The demand says give me more workers, more products. We’re having a hard time. If you do another 2, 3, $4 trillion, we may have a hard time with the tax code, adjustments I believe need to be made. I didn’t vote in 2017 for the tax code, I thought it was weighted for the wealthy,” he added.

Manchin concluded: “I didn’t think the average working person got their due share. Let’s make some adjustments. On the other hand, we’re in a global market, not isolationist, and never going to be isolationist. We have to be in the global market and lead the world. If you’re going to do that, you better be competitive. Can’t be out of the realm of not being competitive, people want to invest or come to your country or manufacture here.”

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Manchin has made quite a few headlines lately.

Last week, the Democrat senator refused to endorse a potential re-election effort by President Biden, saying he preferred to wait to see other options.

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“Are you going to endorse Joe Biden if he runs for re-election?” host Margaret Brennan asked.

“There’s plenty of time for the election. This is the problem with America right now. We start an election every time there’s a cycle coming up,” Manchin responded. “The bottom line is, let’s see who’s involved. Let’s wait until we see who all the players are. Let’s just wait until it all comes out.”

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Manchin also called on Congress and the Biden administration to stop dragging their feet on bipartisan railway safety legislation that would have new rules for trains carrying hazardous materials, increased fines for safety violations, and phase in new cars.

“Back in 2015, in Mount Carbon in West Virginia, we had a derailment, 27 cars, tanker cars carrying Bakken oil. It went off the tracks and derailed and exploded and caused a tremendous problem there. And it was very, very dangerous. It could have been a little — a lot worse, if it had been a little farther down the tracks, could have torn up a whole town. But with that we were recommended that the electronic pneumatic brakes should be something — should be considered that might prevent this, routine maintenance checks and auditing and things of this sort. I don’t think any of that has been done,” Manchin said.

He added: “And it’s time for us to get serious about this. We’re moving many, many products, many more products on the rails and on our roads than we ever did before. And we have a lot of people who don’t want any pipelines. Pipelines would help alleviate a lot of this problem with the oil that we need in our country and we will be using it for quite some time to do it safer.”

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