On Friday’s broadcast of C-SPAN’s “Ceasefire,” former Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) said that he didn’t want to extend Obamacare subsidies at all because the law should have been fixed by Democrats by then but “They wanted to extend it and extend it forever. So, while we were negotiating, we said, well, you have one year to fix it, you all have been sitting on your butts, not doing anything for a year, knowing this is going to hit you.”
Manchin said, “I was right in the middle of that when they were extending…and I didn’t want to even extend it at all. I said, you all should have fixed it by now. We — basically, COVID is over with, let’s go back to pre-COVID. They didn’t want to do that. They wanted to extend it and extend it forever. So, while we were negotiating, we said, well, you have one year to fix it, you all have been sitting on your butts, not doing anything for a year, knowing this is going to hit you.”
He added, “I said, listen, one more year and you should have it done. They said, oh, no, no, we can’t do it during the election year of 2024, let’s go out and extend it to 2025, that was the consolation. That was the reason it was done to 2025, just to get it out of the election year 2024.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
