Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., refused to back congressional Democrats' economic package partly due to a provision that would impose a 15% minimum tax on multinational corporations.
Manchin, who was the key vote on the bill, told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., last week that he could not support the legislation. In a radio interview on Friday, he explained that he didn't support the plan to overhaul the international tax system because other countries haven’t made these changes yet.
"We're not going to go down that path overseas right now," Manchin told West Virginia MetroNews radio host Hoppy Kercheval. "Because the rest of the countries won't follow, and we’ll put all of our international companies in jeopardy, which harms the American economy. Can't do that. So we took that off the table."
Manchin said that "inflation is absolutely killing many, many people. They can't buy gasoline. They have a hard time buying groceries. Everything they buy and consume for their daily lives is a hardship to them. Can't we wait to make sure we do nothing to add to that?
"I can't make that decision on taxes of any type and also on the energy and climate — because it takes the taxes to pay for the investment in clean technology that I'm in favor of. I'm not going to do something and overreach. That causes more problems."
Manchin said he told Schumer: "Chuck, if you're on a political deadline and it has to be done in July, the one thing you know you can get done is, basically, do the bill — run the piece of legislation — on reducing drug prices, letting Medicare negotiate.
"That saves about $288 billion over 10 years. Take $40 billion of that and extend the Affordable Care Act, the discounts that people are getting, so their premiums won't go up. And also take the other $240 billion and put it to debt reduction."
Manchin added during the interview on Friday: "I don't know why they did that. I guess to try to put pressure on me. But they've been doing that for over a year now. It doesn't make any sense at all. As far as I'm concerned, I want climate. I want an energy policy."