Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Monday shut down one of Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) biggest priorities, expanding Medicare, which Manchin warned would undermine the solvency of the broader program.<\/p>\n
Sanders insisted in a tweet Saturday that his proposal to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision must be included in a budget reconciliation package that is likely to come in well below the $3.5 trillion price tag Democratic leaders initially envisioned.<\/p>\n
But Manchin on Monday threw cold water on Sanders\u2019s push to expand Medicare, warning the program faces insolvency in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy big concern right now is the 2026 deadline [for] Medicare insolvency and if no one\u2019s concerned about that, I\u2019ve got people \u2014 that\u2019s a lifeline. Medicare and Social Security is a lifeline for people back in West Virginia, most people around the country,\u201d Manchin warned.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to stabilize that first before you look at basically expansion. So if we\u2019re not being fiscally responsible, that\u2019s a concern,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Every vote counts:\u00a0<\/strong>That\u2019s going to cause a problem with Sanders, whose vote is also essential to getting the budget reconciliation bill passed through the 50-50 Senate.<\/p>\n \u201cThe expansion of Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision is one of the most popular and important provisions in the entire reconciliation bill. It\u2019s what the American people want. It\u2019s not coming out,\u201d Sanders tweeted over the weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Monday...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41454,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41453\/revisions\/41454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}