Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., defended his climate and tax deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer against critics who used an analysis to say that taxes would rise for people earning under $400,000.
Attempting to make his case for his agreement on a reconciliation package, Manchin spoke with Fox News host Harris Faulkner, who told him that taxes would go up for Americans making $400,000 and under. Manchin replied that it’s a “pure, outright lie.”
Faulkner was using an analysis conducted by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which forecasts that the bill’s new 15% minimum corporate tax would potentially cause costs to be passed from companies to consumers.
“So their taxes are not going to go up?” Faulkner asked Manchin, to which he replied, “[N]ot at all. And you know one thing? How about the people that are going to be saving as far as on their Medicare, $288 billion, who are paying higher prices than they should?” Manchin was referencing cost savings from provisions allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower prices with drug companies.
Manchin pivoted to the provisions on the corporate minimum tax, saying that, “[T]he bottom line is, how in the world can you be raising taxes when all we're saying is the wealthiest corporations in America, 55 of them pay zero to help this great country of ours to defend ourselves?”
Faulkner moved back to the issue of taxes going up for earners of $400,000 or less, asking Manchin, “[A]re you saying that [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell and others in the Senate are wrong about those numbers and that Americans' taxes are not going to go up?” to which Manchin replied, “[T]otally wrong. Totally, absolutely wrong. Totally wrong.”
McConnell criticized the Manchin-Schumer deal, stating that “[I]t turns out that proposing huge, job-killing tax hikes and more runaway spending during inflation and a recession doesn't go over well.”