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The Conservative Democratic senator, who is holding a swing vote in the U.S. Senate on Sunday, vowed to block a bill on revising U.S. election law, presenting a major setback to Joe Biden’s efforts to reform voting rights .
Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said the bill, which extends postal voting and extends the hours during which people can vote, was “the wrong legislation to unite our country and unite our country “.
In a post in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Manchin reiterated that he would not help Democrats undo the U.S. Senate’s arcane voting procedure, known as filibuster, which requires a supermajority of 60 senators to sign most laws .
Biden has been pushing the Act for the people, as Republicans have curbed access to voting in many of the U.S. states they control, including Georgia, Florida and Texas.
As the most conservative Democrat in a Senate that had a margin to a wafer, Manchin has emerged as a key distributor. His frequent opposition to the president’s plans illustrates Biden’s difficulty in passing important laws, albeit a divided Congress.
Biden continues to haggle with Republicans over his ambitious infrastructure bill, the proposed value of which has been cut to nearly $ 1 million in talks with Republican lawmakers. In March, Biden submitted $ 2.3 million in spending proposals that would allocate an unprecedented amount of federal money to the country’s roads, bridges, transportation hubs, water facilities and broadband networks.
Republicans insist that while more spending is needed to repair dilapidated infrastructure, any plan needs to be cut, especially after the trillions of federal dollars allocated earlier this year for Covid aid.
The president’s proposals to raise the corporate tax rate or raise taxes on major U.S. winners to pay the extra expense have also been raised.
Manchin has made it clear to the president that he expects the infrastructure package, called the American Jobs Plan, to pass with votes from both Democrats and Republicans.
The second senator representing West Virginia, Republican Shelley Moore Capito, has become the main Republican negotiator in infrastructure talks.
On Friday, people familiar with the talks between Biden and Capito said the president was willing to set aside his demands to raise the U.S. corporate tax rate if there were enough Republicans to agree to give. support for increased infrastructure spending. Biden and Capito are expected to meet on Monday, as a self-imposed deadline is reached to reach a bipartisan agreement.
On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said there were still “good faith efforts” by Democratic and Republican negotiators, and that the president remained optimistic about reaching a bipartisan agreement.
“The practice of legislating is much more art than science, and there is no one better than President Biden,” Raimondo told ABC this week.
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