After stepping off the Senate floor pushing for a commonsense approach to the debt ceiling debate, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., set the president straight on his proposed deficit cutting plan on "Cavuto: Coast to Coast."
"You can't basically just tax your way out of debt. You can't borrow your way out of debt and you can't cut your way out of debt," Manchin told host Neil Cavuto Thursday. "You can do a combination of all of those to a certain extent and manage your debt – we're not managing debt."
The West Virginia senator was responding to a comment made by President Biden during his March budget proposal speech to Congress on Tuesday, where he said: "I want to make it clear. I’m gonna raise some taxes."
While Biden didn’t detail the specific tax plans, he did suggest that "billionaires" would be called upon to pay more.
SEN. MANCHIN SOUNDS ALARM OVER U.S. DEBT: ‘WE HAVE A PROBLEM’
Sen. Manchin rebutted that the best way to get government spending "under control" is with a bipartisan approach to a balanced budget.
"We've had record spending 21 years in a row, more than what we've taken in. When you have running a deficit 21 years in a row and nothing has happened and we accumulated debt," Manchin said, "and the way we've accumulated it, by 2050, we'll have $130 trillion of public debt. We'll be spending $5 trillion a year. Just the interest on that, there's no way you can survive."
The senator further mentioned creating a "rational" plan or package that can pinpoint how U.S. debt grew to the place where "our debt-to-GDP [ratio] is greater than it was after World War II."
"I'm not in agreement with basically holding the debt ceiling and paying our debts of the past hostage. I don't think that accomplishes anything," Manchin said. "Can't we at least have a piece of legislation that we agree on and that we're going to sit down in a bipartisan, bicameral way? Just find out, how do we accumulate so much debt?"
"We don't have to scare the bejesus out of people, and say, 'Oh, the first thing we're going to do, somebody wants to cut Social Security, Medicare.' We've taken that off the table," he added.
Also speaking out against White House and Democrat state-led initiatives for an electric vehicle-only market, Manchin called the policy move "a big mistake."
"The mistake is, first of all, we don't have basically a supply chain that we can rely on. It's all from Germany. It's all from China," he said. "It’s crazy to go down that… our transportation mode, it's never in history been dependent on any other country to supply anything that we needed for automobiles, trains and planes. It's never happened."
Looking ahead to 2024, Manchin indicated he’s refraining from voicing public support for one specific candidate to wait and "see who’s all in the game."
"Whether I'm going to support an individual, whether they're Democrat or Republican, that is not what's up for grabs right now," the senator clarified. "I'm going to look at who has the best plan. I'm going to find the pathway that basically brings America together. Who can do that the best, and who has the best plan for the future of America?"
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Manchin also shut down any speculation of him leaving the Democratic Party, while remaining vague on whether he’ll be running for Senate re-election next year.
"If I decide to run and I'm going to be involved, I intend to win," he said. "I feel very good about the election, whatever decision we make here. But I'm going to make sure that my country and my state has the ability to function normally and not in a dysfunctional way, and not being torn apart by the toxic political atmosphere that we have."
