Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams Joe Manchin’s demands to cut working family policies from final spending bill

• AOC slammed Joe Manchin’s demands to cut working family policies from Biden’s spending bill.
• In a Thursday tweet, the New York lawmaker mocked Manchin’s appeals for fewer programs included.
• Biden has already proposed cuts to his economic plan from $3.5 trillion to $2.2 trillion, but Manchin wants more.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized her fellow Democratic lawmaker, Sen. Joe Manchin, on Thursday, following reports that the West Virginia senator is telling colleagues that progressives need to nix some policies aimed at helping working families from the party’s final spending bill.

Amid ongoing inter-party fighting over the massive reconciliation bill, Axios reported Thursday that Manchin is demanding progressive Democrats pick one of President Joe Biden’s three policies and abandon the other two.

The current iteration of the Build Back Better bill includes an expanded child tax credit, paid family medical leave, and subsidies for child care. But Manchin and other moderates’ insistence on trimming the number of programs in the final package throws a wrench into a possible deal.

“Ah yes, the Conservative Dem position: ‘You can either feed your kid, recover from your c-section, or have childcare so you can go to work – but not all three. All 3 makes you entitled and lazy,'” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 7, 2021

“But fossil fuel $, keeping Rx prices high,& not taxing Wall St are ‘non-negotiable,'” the New York lawmaker added.

A spokesperson for Manchin did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Biden has already proposed cuts to his economic plan down from $3.5 trillion to $2.2 trillion, but Manchin reiterated on Wednesday that he won’t support a package higher than $1.5 trillion.

Progressives like Ocasio-Cortez are fighting to keep all the proposed assistance programs in the final package by funding them for shorter amounts of time in order to lower the final price on the package, while centrists in the party are opting for the opposite approach: cutting the number of programs but funding them for longer.

The three working family programs that Manchin has targeted would likely cost around $1.4 trillion alone, according to Axios, with the expanded $3,600-per-child tax credit coming in at $450 billion, the estimated cost of paid family medical leave clocking in around $500 billion, and daycare subsidies and universal preschool costing $450 billion.