Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., announced on Sunday that he will not vote for President Joe Biden's Build Back Better bill, bringing months of negotiations over the $1.7 trillion social safety net bill to a screeching halt.
He made the comments on "Fox News Sunday" in its first week without longtime host Chris Wallace, telling fill-in anchor Bret Baier that he "cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation."
"I've tried everything humanly possible. I can't get there," he added.
Manchin's announcement comes following a heated week of wrangling in which the Democratic Party made a number of last-minute changes in an attempt to appease the conservative West Virginia Democrat. Tempers flared at one point over his opposition to the inclusion of a permanent child tax credit — something insiders suggested he wanted to "zero out," according to CNN.
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"I've always been for child tax credits. We voted for it many times," Manchin said when asked about his opposition to Build Back Better on Wednesday, before unloading a series of expletives at reporters.
"This is bull----. You're bull----," Manchin reportedly said to HuffPost political reporter Arthur Delaney.
Unless Manchin changes his mind, it appears the Build Back Better bill is effectively dead.
The Democrats have some time to plead their case as they push the measure to the backburner, however — party insiders suggested to NBC this week that they would reconsider the legislation as late as March of next year.
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In the meantime, they plan to focus on a voting rights bill that looks equally futile in the face of Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's continuing refusal to alter Senate filibuster rules to pass the legislation.
Watch Manchin's interview below:
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