from Hacker News

Sen. Joe Manchin says no to $2T bill: ‘I can’t vote for it’

by discocrisco on 12/19/21, 3:58 PM with 97 comments

• by syki on 12/19/21, 4:06 PM

  Democratic senators represent 40 million more people than Republican senators and their agenda can't be passed. The last time Republican senators represented more than half the population was 1996. Rural, low population states have far too much power in the present system. This is not sustainable.

  I know Manchin is nominally a Democrat but it's not him that is blocking the legislation it is him and all 50 Republican senators (Sinema from Arizona).

  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/02/gop-senators-havent-...

• by xqcgrek2 on 12/19/21, 4:13 PM

  Joe Manchin is taking the hit for a lot of other Democrats would would vote against this insane irresponsible bill, but can't let their intensions be publicly known.

  It was a foregone conclusion this bill would fail in this way once it was split up from the real infrastructure bill.

• by DennisAleynikov on 12/19/21, 4:01 PM

  Manchin demonstrating once again that we do live in a democracy, at least a representative one.

• by tacosbane on 12/19/21, 5:54 PM

  The Democrats have 49 seats in the Senate! They should be able to do whatever they want!

• by marricks on 12/19/21, 4:12 PM

  It’s funny because he argued for a year saying he would if he got A, gets it, then says he needs B… on and on until like L then when its finally in front of him to vote he acts like he never could anyways. People like this are the skeeziest.

  Then again, there seems to always need to be 1 democrat who will stand in the way of getting things done everyday people want. It was Joe Lieberman when democrats last had the senate. Who knows what the senate leaders would actually allow to happen but it’s easier to have all that hate on one Joe.