"This Is A No": Manchin Announces He Won't Vote For Build Back Better

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has just killed his party's $2 trillion "Build Back Better" plan, announcing on Sunday that he won't support it. This means that unless he changes his mind, or at least one Republican Senator crosses the aisle to vote with every other Democrat in the chamber, the bill is dead.

Manchin released a Sunday statement further explaining his position.

"My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face," it reads. "I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than $29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hard-working American at the gasoline pumps, grocery stores and utility bills with no end in sight."

Manchin also pointed to the Omicron Covid-19 variant and cases rising "at rates we have not seen since the height of this pandemic," along with "increasing geopolitical uncertainty as tension rise with both Russia and China."

Further, he says the bill would "also risk the reliability of our electric grid and increase our dependence on foreign supply chains."