West Virginia moderate Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, the eternal optimist, says the Senate isn’t on “suicide watch yet.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made headlines this weekend, when he told the Philadelphia Inquirer “if I was in the Senate right now, I’d kill myself.”
“They haven’t put us on suicide watch yet, but they’re concerned about us,” Manchin said with a laugh, but grew more serious when he discussed the government shutdown that has lasted a full two weeks.
“I miss the good old days, I’ll tell you that. And the bottom line is this, I just never thought that I’d ever sign up for public service and then you see the agencies that you sign up for have self-inflicted pain on the people you take an oath to serve: the public.”
This weekend, Manchin joined forces with Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins on a potential deal that would have kept sequester spending levels for six months while making some small changes to Obamacare. The proposed deal failed shortly after being brought up.
“It’s a good template, it takes into consideration everybody’s needs,” Manchin said of the plan.
Jane Timm