West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin (I) said that President Biden “made me completely mad” because of the congressman's opposition to the American Rescue Plan, which is the president's first major law.
“I was going to kill the whole bill. The president then went completely crazy on me,” said Manchin in an interview with the Semafor news agency published on Thursday.
The centrist senator said he told Democrats and Biden to “at least put some things back” in the law to allow Americans to “get back to work sooner.”
Ultimately, Democrats in Congress passed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 aid package without Republican votes on reconciliation. Manchin, who will retire from the upper chamber at the end of his term, initially opposed voting for the spending package, but after Democrats made changes to extended unemployment benefits, he came around.
When considering the aid package, Manchin said in an interview that he should have voted against it because of the size of the bill. He told Semafor that he supports this package to show respect to Biden.
Manchin's comments confirm that Biden pressured him to vote for the COVID-19 aid package. Biden and Manchin spoke by phone in March 2021, when the president urged the senator to support Biden's first major bill.
“Biden avoided using personal pressure. But his patience was limited. He picked up the phone and delivered a stern message to Manchin. He said the obvious: 'Joe, if you don't come, you really make me happy. I need you this time. Find a way to yes,'” Atlantic staff writer Franklin Foer wrote in his book titled “The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future.”
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