Joe Manchin Has a Plan for Congress Pay: Need to ‘Inspire Them’

Senator Joe Manchin, ruby-red West Virginia’s last Democrat in Congress, believes he has an idea that will inspire Congress to work harder—block politicians’ pay if they don’t get the job done.

On Thursday, Congress voted to extend the government funding deadlines to March 8 for six government agencies and March 22 for the remaining six, marking the fourth time it has passed extensions to avert a shutdown since the onset of fiscal year 2024, which began October 1.

The compromise-oriented Manchin, who’s served as a critical swing vote throughout the Biden presidency, announced November 9 that he would end his nearly 14-year career in the Senate and has since been vocal about what he’d like to see done to improve government.

“There’s got to be something that influences, inspires them, penalties, something to make us do our job,” Manchin told Newsweek. “So, from the leadership on down, if you don’t get it done, there ought to be automatic withholding of your pay or some sort of cuts that no one wants to endure, some penalty.”

Manchin serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, the upper chamber’s chief spending authority, which holds jurisdiction over how the government will be funded year to year.

While that committee and its House counterpart are responsible for passing 12 spending bills each year, Congress has not passed those 12 bills individually since 1997. Instead, it has spent most years writing the bills, then waiting to pass them near the deadline in a legislative package, called an omnibus, that bunches the 12 into one bill.

House Republicans decided they would do things differently when they took charge of the House in January 2023. However, hardline conservatives have demanded on including policies, from cuts to social safety net programs to restrictions on the LGBTQ+ community, which have drawn the scorn of Democrats and some moderates, leaving them shy of the votes needed to pass their 12 bills.

Despite having its bills finished within the Appropriations Committee, the larger Senate has not voted on most of them. A resolution could be coming though, as House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have a top-line spending agreement in place.

However, Manchin believes if penalties and spending regulations were in place from the start, lawmakers would have reached an agreement sooner.

“We’re supposed to have it completed by the end of the fiscal year, and there’s no penalty,” he said. “When you’re governor, you have a balanced budget amendment. I’d love to see a transition to that over a period of years to get us to the point where you just can’t spend more than what you’re bringing in.”

A balanced budget amendment stipulates that a state cannot spend more than it earns. Manchin, a former governor, has been vocal about his belief that America’s over $34 trillion national debt endangers the country’s security.

This position puts Manchin closer in line with many Republicans who have cited a desire to lower the national debt when introducing their spending bills. However, he differs from many of them in that he opposed the 2017 tax cuts implemented under former President Donald Trump, which reduced taxes for corporations and contributed an estimated $1.9 trillion to the national debt, per the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

For the West Virginia Democrat, spending must align with tax revenue. He likens the issue of government funding to that of a typical American household. Some years, families will have to make sacrifices, and other years, they’ll have extra funds to spend.

“You have to make adjustments accordingly, like every household, like every business, everybody has to work within their budget except here [in Congress],” Manchin said. “And the only thing I can figure out, because I’ve been here 14 years, is that most of us don’t have a printing press. If we had a printing press, we could probably be like the federal government.”