It Looks Like Manchin is Prepared to Kill the Reconciliation Bill.
Surprise, Surprise.
At this point, it feels safe to say that Joe Manchin is quite high on the list of lawmakers in Washington D.C. who have absolutely no business being there. After spending virtually the entirety of Joe Biden’s tenure thus far serving as the face of a broader obstructionist movement within the Democratic party, one can’t help getting the sense that Manchin — like McConnell in a way — gets a sadistic sort of pleasure from heightening his relevance by preventing anything from getting done. Well, now it appears as though the West Virginia senator has set his sights on the reconciliation bill that was theoretically supposed to pass alongside the infrastructure bill, and explicitly publicly threatened it.
Washington Post reporter Seung Min Kim tweeted about an “ominous” sign of what was to come, quoting Manchin as saying:
“If the bipartisan infrastructure bill falls apart, everything could fall apart … Both of them are extremely important. when one falls apart, then how do you do the other one?”
In other words, if Chuck Schumer even thinks about moving forward with the reconciliation bill if the bipartisan bill…
