Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Friday that President Obama’s jobs plan has some good parts in it but there are areas that could be changed.
“There’s a good, a bad and an ugly,” Manchin said on Fox News. “I don’t think it’s going to be given to us in one solid bill.”
Manchin, a centrist Democrat, was part of a 37-member bipartisan group of senators who announced Thursday their support for the supercommittee to cut at least $4 trillion from the deficit over a 10-year span. Relating that bipartisan action to the jobs bill, Manchin was confident that the Senate can work toward amending the president’s jobs plan.
“Eighteen Republicans, 19 Democrats came together supporting a larger deal for the deficit, so we’ve showed we can come together, and I think that we can find good parts of the bill,” Manchin said.
The former West Virginia governor supports such areas in the president’s jobs bill as building a national infrastructure bank, but was less optimistic that extending payroll-tax cuts would help spur job growth.
He also spoke about revamping the tax code: “I think that fairness needs to be in the tax system,” Manchin said.
He went on to suggest that tax dollars be used on cutting the deficit rather than on more spending.
