FAIRMONT – With the U.S. Senate on break after passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Sen. Joe Manchin came home Wednesday evening to deliver the keynote address at the Marion County Chamber of Commerce annual dinner at Fairmont State.
Before dinner, he spent some time with the press to talk about the infrastructure bill, the social infrastructure bill coming up next, the WVU-Viatris announcement and some other topics.
On the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Manchin said, “What we have done right now, it’s something very monumental. Over 30 years, we haven’t passed an infrastructure bill to fix the crumbling infrastructure.”
People thought Congress was stuck in a partisan impasse, he said. “We showed them that we could. … What we have to do now is find more and more reasons for us to be together.”
Manchin said he remains cautious about the $3.5 trillion social infrastructure package to be taken up after the break.
The package isn’t a package yet. Senators will vote on a budget resolution that includes instructions for drafting the $3.5 trillion spending package that will be crafted in September. The resolution is expected to pass without GOP support via reconciliation, which bypasses the filibuster and allows for simple majority passage.
“I’m concerned about the debt,” he said, which rises by $4 billion per day. “We’ve got to stop it. We’ve got to reverse that trend.” And he’s concerned about inflation, which is hovering between 4% and 5%, not typical during prosperous times.
Keeping the debt from growing, he said, means making adjustments to the tax code that can keep us competitive while paying our way.
He said he has ideas to pare down the $3.5 trillion price tag, but didn’t enumerate them. “I’ve got a lot of ’em. … That discussion’s going to start, and it needs to be robust.”
An important part of that discussion is determining how much money they have. “Whatever that number would be, you ought to pick your priorities based on how much you have – not based on what you want to spend and try to find the money and go in debt.”
Commenting on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s stated desire to pass the two infrastructure bills in tandem, he said, “Each piece of legislation should stand on its own. Either vote it up or down.”
Manchin issued a statement earlier Wednesday on the announcement that WVU and Viatris are having talks about WVU possibly taking over ownership of the former Mylan plant in Morgantown (reported elsewhere in today’s The Dominion Post). He offered some additional comments at FSU in reply to a question from The Dominion Post.
“There’s been a lot going on for a long time, that I’ve been very much aware of,” he said. “There’s a golden opportunity.” He knows that there’s consternation over the silence about the fate of the plant.
“I would assume they’re looking at all different things they can do,” he said, including bringing in employers and creating jobs.
“They have a skilled workforce, we know,” he said of the 1,500 unemployed plant workers. “Can they bring them back in some form? I think there’s going to be a lot of opportunities. … Just to see that they’re talking and working together, I think is a tremendous, tremendous hope for all of us.”
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