Manchin Slams Sanders For Supporting Biden Spending Plan

US Democratic Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia slammed fellow lawmaker Bernie Sanders late Friday over his attempts to garner support for President Joe Biden's multi-trillion-dollar spending package in the latest example of infighting among key lawmakers over the plan, Chris Prentice reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: The State Office in Washington D.C., United States (placed in the photo)

Manchin tweeted out his concern over the scope of the legislation in response to an editorial from Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, advocating for it. On Friday, West Virginia paper the Charleston Gazette-Mail published an editorial from Sanders urging support for the Democratic plan to address wealth inequity, soaring pharmaceutical costs, an increasingly expensive healthcare system, and costly childcare.

"Senator Sanders' answer is to throw more money on an already overheated economy while 52 other Senators have grave concerns about this approach," Manchin said in a statement posted on Friday on Twitter, slamming Sanders as an "out-of-stater."

The bill is threatened by a lack of support among Senate Republicans and two Democratic moderates - Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona. Sinema has told Democrats in the House of Representatives she will not vote for the package before Congress approves a separate, bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

Sinema and Manchin have balked at the Biden plan's initial $3.5 trillion price tag for a spending measure to fund social programs and fight climate change. As a result, the president faces a difficult balancing act in trying to bring down the cost but not alienate progressive Democrats who also are essential to passing the legislation.

Both of them have not said a word about Trump’s tax cut for the rich approved by defeated US President Donald Trump that pushed the public debt by $8 trillion.

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