Joe Manchin: “Let me just say that I think what happened is we have a bill that is hard to vote against. It really is. And I…”

“Let me just say that I think what happened is we have a bill that is hard to vote against. It really is. And I understand why there were 73 Senators who voted for it. Senator Cruz has had this and worked diligently for many years on this, to fix the WEP. The bottom line is, it never came to committee here. It came out of the House and came right to the floor. Now, whether they thought it was a feel-good vote or whatever, the only thing I am saying is, it is not a responsible position for us to take with the debt that we are carrying now and complicating it by adding more and more on. We all talk about the fiscal responsibilities. Every one of us have fiscal responsibilities in our home--every one of our family members, every one of our constituents. We seem to have no constraint here whatsoever. And we saw that $200 billion pricetag on this. Is there a better way? You can be against something if you don't have a better way of fixing it. We basically have posed this piece of legislation because we can fix the inequities done. That can be done and taking care of the people who got left behind and got shortchanged. We identify it. The bottom line is, we have a fix for it. Let us fix it. If you wanted to fix it and have a good bill, you should have put it in committee. If it is not, it is going to be done next year with a commitment from the majority party.…”