Manchin: Biden’s coal comments are ‘divorced from reality’
Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., left, looks at Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., as Manchin listens while answering questions during a Senate confirmation hearing on President Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. Trade Representative, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2017. Manchin voted to advance U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman’s nomination to his confirmation hearing with Senate Democrats. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
SEN. JAY COLEMAN, D-BOULDER: What Senator Manchin’s reaction says about Joe Manchin.
Manchin’s comment is divorced from reality. It’s from this reality that he is a very conservative Democrat who wants lower taxes and does not want global agreements, and I actually think he’s on the far-left end of the Democrat tent, and so I don’t believe that his statements, I believe that they come from the same place that he comes from and he’s a friend of mine.
Manchin is not one of the members of the coalition of liberals, of the Democratic caucus, who would work on an infrastructure bill. He’s one of the members of the Democratic caucus who are not interested in working on an infrastructure bill. He told Bloomberg that there’s no chance he would support the Ryan budget. And then he says, “We’re not interested in bringing down the deficits, we’re just not interested in doing that.”
This is a guy who is interested in spending money that we need in order for us to be competitive, but he’s not really interested in doing it by bringing down the deficit. He wants to use earmarks for infrastructure so that we look more like a country that is wealthy than one that is not.
So now what I have said is that Sen. Manchin is
