Rep. Bobby Rush says Manchin has 'become too much of a rural elitist' in his proposed restrictions for the child tax credit

• A retiring House Democrat swung at Manchin in a Washington Post interview published Friday.
• Rep. Bobby Rush called Manchin a "rural elitist" for pitching restrictions to the child tax credit.

Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, a retiring House Democrat, is taking some hard swings on his way out the door in Congress.

During an interview with The Washington Post published Friday, Rush unleashed a barrage of criticisms at Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Manchin, a conservative Democrat, has once again proposed adding a work requirement onto the expanded child tax credit, a step that would shut out millions of families with little or no taxable earnings from getting the federal cash.

In Manchin's home state, 50,000 kids are at risk of slipping back or further into poverty from the recent expiration of the program, per the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.

"Maybe he has become too much of a rural elitist, that he can't identify with the common man, the common woman, the common ordinary family in West Virginia," Rush told the Post. "This notion that everyone who is in need is some kind of criminal, looking for some kind of advantage — I think that is so shortsighted, so morally incomprehensible and incorrect.

He went on: "Maybe Manchin needs to come off that boat that he's living on and go back to the hills," referring to the houseboat in the Potomac where Manchin resides while in Washington, DC.

Activists from West Virginia have protested Manchin's resistance to the social and climate spending package, The Hill reported.

Manchin's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Manchin's resistance to the expanded child tax credit is part of the holdup around President Joe Biden's $2 trillion Build Back Better Plan. It would set up a one-year extension of the program and provide up to $300 in monthly checks with no strings attached to the majority of American families. Manchin came out against it last month, and Democrats can't approve the plan over unified GOP opposition without his vote in the 50-50 Senate.

But Senate Democrats aren't sure if they'll be able to get Manchin to step back from his renewed push for a work requirement. "I don't know," Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado told Insider.

"I don't think we should be punishing workers at the moment when 97% of the people who receive the tax credit are working — when there are grandparents, people driving Ubers and Lyfts that may not file W-2s," Bennet said.