WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate who has stood as a stumbling block to much of President Joe Biden’s agenda, called a media report that he could consider leaving the Democratic Party “bullshit,” adding that he had “no controls over rumors.”
Mother Jones earlier on Wednesday said Manchin would consider leaving his party and becoming an independent if Democrats did not agree to substantially trim back the size of Biden’s social spending bill, once targeted at $3.5 trillion.
Top Democrats this week said the program would be scaled back sharply, to closer to $2 trillion.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan and David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Rosalba O’Brien)
