Joe Manchin is throwing cold water on paid leave again, threatening to leave the US as the world's only developed economy without mandated time off for workers

• Democrats are still hashing out their party-line social spending package, and what will be included.
• Paid leave was omitted from President Joe Biden's initial framework, but got added back in.

Democrats have already made deep cuts to their party-line social-spending bill — and key centrist Sen. Joe Manchin is suggesting that paid leave may still not make the final cut.

When President Joe Biden announced his $1.75 trillion social spending framework, paid leave provisions — which would be the first federal mandates that all employers give some time off to workers — were axed completely. Democrats' initial $3.5 trillion proposal included 12 weeks of paid leave. Manchin, one of two pivotal centrist votes, had pushed back against it.

"This deal has clearly come together based on opposition from one male senator — Senator Manchin," Molly Day, the executive director of advocacy group PL+US: Paid Leave for the United States, told Insider at the time.

Then, paid leave came back, but significantly scaled back: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi requested that four weeks of paid leave be added back, essentially daring Manchin to sink the proposal. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has said that paid leave is "personal to the president." Now, Manchin is hinting that he might still prove to be an obstacle.

"I've been very clear where I stand on that," he told reporters on Wednesday.

It's a fresh sign that the conservative Democrat hasn't budged on the measure. Last month, he objected to its inclusion in a party-line spending package. "I just think it's the wrong place to put it because it's a social expansion," he said. He also wants workers to assume part of the cost to access the benefits with a new tax on their wages.

Manchin's opposition would sink the measure, since Democrats can't afford any defections in the 50-50 Senate. But that's not stopping some from pitching him on it. "I have talked a lot with him," Sen. Patty Murray of Washington told Insider.

"Let's see how we can get 50 votes here," Murray, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, said. "That's what we're working on."

Currently, the US has no federally mandated paid leave — making it an outlier amongst all other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. As of March 2021, only 23% of civilian workers had access to paid family leave, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number is worse for the lowest-earning workers, where only 8% have access to paid family leave.

Insider's Ben Winck recently spoke to a West Virginia couple, Edmund and JoAnna Vance, who said that Edmund had to leave his job at a coal mine for a two-week treatment program, and since he didn't have paid leave, he had to find a new job afterward. He ended up finding one that pays less than half of his prior earnings.

JoAnna addressed Manchin's positions, specifically, saying, "all of the time, he's talking about how he doesn't want to give government handouts, and that he wants people to work."

"Paid leave keeps people working. It's not just a handout."