Sen. Joe Manchin told colleagues he believes parents will use child tax credits to buy drugs and people will abuse paid leave to go hunting, report says

• Sen. Joe Manchin told colleagues he believes Americans will abuse benefits in Biden’s spending package.
• Manchin thinks parents will use child tax credit funds to buy drugs, the Huffington Post reported.
• The West Virginia senator officially killed off any chance of the bill passing in its current form.

Sen. Joe Manchin privately told his Senate colleagues that he believes Americans will abuse government benefits, like the extended child tax credit and paid leave, in President Joe Biden’s sweeping $2 trillion spending package, the Huffington Post reports. 

Specifically, Manchin argued that parents will use child tax credit money to buy drugs and that workers will abuse the paid family leave program in the legislation to get out of work and go on hunting trips, unnamed sources familiar with his remarks told the Huffington Post. 

The US Senate left town early Saturday morning without voting on the nearly $2 trillion spending package, known as the Build Back Better agenda, after unsuccessful negotiations between the White House and Manchin over the bill. And the West Virginia Democrat, a key swing vote in a Senate evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, officially killed any chance of the legislation passing the US Senate in its current form on Sunday. 

“If I can’t go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia I can’t vote for it,” Manchin told Fox News in a Sunday interview. “I’ve tried everything humanly possible, I can’t get there. This is a no.”

In a subsequent statement, Manchin cited concerns about the bill adding to the national debt, worsening inflation, and reducing the US’ reliance on fossil fuels and coal “faster than technology or the markets allow.”

“My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face,” Manchin said. “I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than $29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hard-working American at the gasoline pumps, grocery stores and utility bills with no end in sight.”

The version of the sweeping legislation passed by the US House included an extension of the child tax credit, four weeks of paid family leave, and universal pre-kindergarten. The bill further took on healthcare challenges including drug pricing reforms, shoring up the Affordable Care Act, and adding coverage of hearing benefits in Medicare. It also allocated hundreds of billions towards measures to combat the climate emergency.

The United States is the only developed nation and one of a few countries worldwide with no national paid family and medical leave program. Manchin has previously sought to add work requirements to the child tax credit and expressed opposition to passing paid leave, specifically expressing concern that the bill wouldn’t fully pay for a paid leave program. 

The notion that low-income Americans won’t be responsible with money from government benefits has spurred numerous mostly Republican-controlled states to require drug testing for recipients of programs like food stamps or Temporary Assistance for Families in Need (TANF) benefits, and impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients. 

Other Democratic senators were “shocked” by Manchin’s comments and saw them as an “unfair assault” on those living in poverty, the Huffington Post reported. 

A representative for Manchin did not immediately return Insider’s request for comment. 

The Senate enacted the current beefed-up child tax credit in the American Rescue Plan, which Democrats passed along party lines in March, increasing the maximum amount parents can receive from $2,000 per year to $3,600, depending on the age of the child, regardless of whether the parents earn enough to file tax returns. Over 36 million households have taken advantage of the tax credit since payments started going out in July. 

The extended child tax credit in the Build Back Better agenda would have allowed parents who earn below a certain income to receive $300 per child under six and $250 for children between six and 18 for another year. Without congressional action, the expanded child tax credit will expire at the end of 2021. 

As the Huffington Post noted, there is little evidence that the enhanced benefits are being used to purchase drugs. A US Census Pulse survey from October found that 58% of recipients said they used the money for food, 33% used the funds for utilities, and 30% put the money towards school transportation and buying clothes, respectively. 

Researchers found that the expanded child tax credit has already significantly reduced both child poverty and child hunger and has the potential to lift even more children out of poverty if extended.