Manchin Is Still No on Reconciliation: ‘What I See Are Shell Games, Budget Gimmicks’

It's time to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill and "quit playing games," Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) told a news conference on Monday.

The senator -- one of two Democrats so far refusing to pass the larger "human” infrastructure/reconciliation bill – said he’s “worked in good faith for months with all of my colleagues to find a middle ground” on the reconciliation legislation – “and I will continue to do so,” he said.

As more details have emerged about the reported framework agreement, “what I see are shell games, budget gimmicks that make the real cost of this so-called $1.75-trillion-dollar bill estimated to be almost twice that amount, if the full time is run out – if you extended it permanently, and that we haven’t even spoken about.”

To shave the up-front cost of the reconciliation bill, Democrats were willing to create new entitlement programs but fund them for a shorter period of time, assuming that they could extend funding for those programs later on.

“This is a recipe for economic crisis,” Manchin said.