MORGANTOWN – Sens. Shelley Moore Capito and Joe Manchin both spoke with members of the West Virginia press this week about President Biden’s address to Congress and other topics.
Capito took her turn on Thursday. “The president laid out a very ambitious agenda, lot of money,” she said. His $6 trillion wish list – the American Rescue Plan that already passed, the American Jobs Act now being debated, and the American $1.8 trillion American Families Plan brought out on Wednesday – are “far afield of the direction we should be going.”
While Biden pledged unity and bipartisanship – principles she’s on board with – “his approach has been very very expansive, to expansive in my opinion. … It left a lot to the imagination on how he’s going to get this through
The American Families Plan, as Hoppy Kercheval summarized it in one of his columns, seeks free preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds, free community college, subsidized childcare, a national family and medical leave program, reductions in health insurance premiums for Affordable Care Act plans, permanently increased child tax credits.
Biden’s “payfor” for his plans is tax hikes, getting the 1% (households making more than $400,000) and corporations to pay their fair share, as he puts it.
Capito took a question on her thoughts about the tax hikes. She said when President Trump succeeded in lowering the corporate tax rate to 21%, it led to growth in the economy, jobs and wages. Everyone benefited and that’s the positive side of keeping it where it is.
We don’t want to put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage, she said. Tax hikes could lead to fewer jobs and to companies pausing capital investments and expansions.
Manchin talked on Friday. “I thought it was a well-toned speech, a well-delivered speech,” he said.
Biden said more than once that he and Congress can work on things and put them up for a vote. “I took that as a real welcome call to let’s make this place work, let’s have start having some amendments, let’s let it work through the committees.” And everyone can make amendments on the floor.
“If you get rid of the filibuster,” he said, “there is no mechanism to force people to work together or to give the minority a chance to participate,” and that’s not the way the Senate was designed.
Before Congress changes the tax rates, Manchin said, we need to look at why we’re not collecting somewhere from $400 billion to $1 trillion each year; the IRS needs a long-overdue fix.
We can’t keep growing the debt, Manchin said. The last time the nation had a surplus was in 1997 under President and a GOP Congress.
Clinton’s chief of staff Erkine Bowles worked with Congress to hammer out a balanced budget bill that led to the surpluses. Manchin said he’s asked Bowles to work with him, to show him how they worked out that budget those years ago and compare that to what’s proposed now. “There’s a proper way to do this without throwing caution to the wind.
The Dominion Post asked Manchin about the concerns Capito and others have raised – that tax hikes could lead to job losses, slowed business growth and perhaps a renewed push for corporate tax inversions.
“I have all the concerns you just mentioned,” he said. “We are doing a deep dive.”
He referred back to his comments about 1997 and Bowles. “They can justify their taxes if they want to spend money,” Manchin said. “The bottom line is is it practical and reasonable, and is it basically good for our economy and our country.”
Other topics
Capito and Manchin have both expressed skepticism about Biden’s American Jobs Plan, an infrastructure bill that goes well beyond what both consider core infrastructure. Both praised the bipartisan passage this week of the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act.
It authorizes more than $35 billion for drinking water and wastewater resource development projects across the country with a focus on upgrading aging infrastructure, addressing the threat of climate change, investing in new technologies, and providing assistance to marginalized communities, Capito said.
She praised the bipartisan cooperation and said it will play a role whatever final infrastructure bill is crafted. While Biden has pledged bipartisanship, she said, his agenda has leaned well left. “Maybe I can play a part in pulling us back together again more toward the center.”
Manchin announced on Friday his opposition to the House bill to grant statehood to Washington, D.C.
Hecame to his conclusion after researching the issue, he said. Back when John Kennedy was president, he said, there were three options on the table for D.C. Congress chose, through the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution, to grant D.C. three electors, not to make it a state or return it to Maryland.
In 1963, Manchin said, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy said it would take another amendment to change that. He agrees with that and said D.C. statehood is something the American people should decide.
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
