Manchin issues new inflation warning as Schumer seeks to pass Biden's massive bill by Christmas

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has issued another warning about the economic effects of rising inflation as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seeks to pass President Joe Biden's massive Build Back Better Act by Christmas.

Manchin's vote is needed in the split 50-50 Senate to pass the Democrats' spending bill, which reflects much of Biden's social and climate agenda.

The legislation is estimated to cost $2.4 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and raise the deficit by $367 billion. It includes new social programs and about $550 billion for climate change initiatives. It also contains legal status for certain categories of illegal immigrants. The cost of the bill could double if its policies are made permanent, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. 

"The Feds are even saying [inflation is] not transitory and they're hoping it'll reduce and we don't know — we'll have to wait and see," Manchin said at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Summit on Tuesday evening.

"The unknown we're facing today is much greater than the need that people believe in this aspirational bill that we're looking at," he added. "And we've got to make sure we get this right. We just can't continue to flood the market as we've done."

The National Association for Business Economics' December 2021 survey and report indicates that Americans are going to be dealing with inflation until the second half of 2023 or later.

"The core consumer price index, which excludes food and energy costs, is now expected to rise 6.0 percent from the fourth quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to the September forecast of a 5.1 percent increase over the same period," NABE Vice President Julia Coronado said, according to the West Virginia Record.

"Nearly three-fourths of respondents — 71 percent — anticipate that the Federal Reserve's preferred gauge of inflation, the change in the core PCE price index, will not cool down to or below the Fed's target of 2 percent year-over-year until the second half of 2023 or later," she added.

The rate of inflation is currently near a 40-year high. 

Back in September, Manchin said that an "overheating economy," fueled by unprecedented pandemic stimulus spending, was leading to an "inflation tax" on the middle-class.

"The nation faces an unprecedented array of challenges and will inevitably encounter additional crises in the future," he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. "Yet some in Congress have a strange belief there is an infinite supply of money to deal with any current or future crisis, and that spending trillions upon trillions will have no negative consequence for the future. I disagree."

Democrat activists are ramping up pressure on Manchin and Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to support passage of the legislation in the Senate. 

"I'm not liberal," Manchin said on Tuesday evening. "I don't know what to tell you. I love you all. I'm just not. I don't try to change Bernie [Sanders]. Bernie is true to himself. I respect and appreciate that. Why do they want to change me?"

Some in the business community, notably Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, oppose Biden's bill, warning that the nation's record $3 trillion deficit is not sustainable.

"If this was a company, it would be a $3 trillion loss," Musk said, addressing the federal government's level of spending. "This can't keep going."