Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. says Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., “sabotaged” efforts to pass President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act.
His comments came in an interview with Vanity Fair posted Thursday. Manchin and Sinema refused to support the spending package, and Sanders said Democrats don’t have an effective strategy to deal with them.
Sanders said Manchin and Sinema “sabotaged our efforts, what we were trying to do.”
“Ever since then, the Democratic Party has stumbled and fallen further and further behind,” Sanders said. “How you handle Manchin, how you handle Sinema and the other conservative Democrats is one of the challenges that the Democrats have got to deal with. But the current strategy is an absolute political failure.”
It isn’t the first time Sanders has been publicly critical of Manchin.
In October, Sanders published a column in the Charleston Gazette-Mail in Manchin's home state.
"Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for this legislation," Sanders wrote. "Yet, the political problem we face is that in a 50-50 Senate we need every Democratic senator to vote ‘yes.’ We now have only 48. Two Democratic senators remain in opposition, including Sen. Joe Manchin.”
Manchin pushed back, saying: "This isn't the first time an out-of-stater has tried to tell West Virginians what is best for them despite having no relationship to our state."
"Millions of jobs are open, supply chains are strained and unavoidable inflation taxes are draining workers’ hard-earned wages as the price of gasoline and groceries continues to climb. Sen. Sanders’ answer is to throw more money on an already overheated economy while 52 other senators have grave concerns about this approach."
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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