Joe Manchin, the outgoing senator from West Virginia, stated in a new interview that President Biden “went completely insane on me” because of the senator’s early opposition to the American Rescue Plan, which was the first major piece of legislation that the president had ever introduced.
“I was going to kill the whole bill. Then the president went completely insane on me,” Manchin remarked in the interview.
The moderate senator stated that he had communicated to the Democratic members of Congress and Vice President Biden to “at least draw some things back” in the proposal in order for it to earn his support.
In the end, the COVID-19 relief plan, which was worth $1.9 trillion, was approved by the Democrats in Congress through reconciliation without receiving any votes from Republicans.
Manchin, who is scheduled to leave the upper house at the conclusion of his tenure, was initially opposed to voting for the spending bill.
However, after Democrats made modifications to the extended unemployment benefits, he ended up changing his mind and voted in favor of the package.
During the interview, Manchin explained that he now believes he should have voted against the relief package because of the enormity of the bill.
The reason he supported the plan at the time, he explained to Semafor, was primarily to show respect to Biden.
It is clear from Manchin’s statements that Biden exerted major pressure on him to vote in favor of the COVID-19 relief package.
In March of 2021, Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Joe Manchin had a phone conversation in which the president persuaded Senator Manchin to support Biden’s first major bill.
Manchin decided not to run for re-election to the Senate in his home state of West Virginia after polls showed him losing to Republican Jim Justice by significant margins.
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