Washington Post reporter hammered for framing White House appeasement of Joe Manchin as making 'grueling cuts'

Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein was hammered over the weekend for framing the White House's potential appeasement of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., in order to pass a massive spending bill as making "grueling cuts" to the Biden agenda.

The massive Democrat-backed $3.5 trillion spending bill, which progressives have demanded coincide with a bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, hit a roadblock in the Senate as moderates Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., refused to back it. Both cited concerns over the cost of the bill as reason for wanting to compromise and reach an agreement on a smaller, more targeted bill, something that appears to have made little progress following weeks of negotiations.

Critics took to social media to blast Stein, taking issue with his framing that changes to the spending proposal would amount to a "cut," considering a negotiated bill would still lead to a massive increase in government spending.