Manchin: Prez must lead on budget

Politico's The Huddle has an early look at a floor speech today from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., in which he explains why he will vote for neither of the Senate's planned sure-to-fail test votes for a long-term continuing resolution and calls out President Obama for not taking the lead in the squabble:

"[B]oth our options are extremely partisan and unrealistic. And neither one will pass. The first is a Democratic proposal that doesn't go nearly far enough. This proposal, which calls for $6.5 billion in new cuts, utterly ignores our fiscal reality ... Or, we could choose a second, even more flawed measure: a GOP proposal that blindly hacks the budget with no sense of our priorities or of our values as a country," he plans to say. "Why are we doing all this when the most powerful person in these negotiations - our president - has failed to lead this debate or offer a serious proposal for spending and cuts that he would be willing to fight for? ... This debate will be decided when the president leads these tough negotiations. And, right now - that is not happening. ... The bottom line is this - the president is the leader of this great nation, and when it comes to an issue of significant national importance, the president must lead. Not the majority leader or speaker, but the president."