Manchin hits back at Sanders criticism in fight over Biden investment plan

• Vermont senator chides Manchin over lack of support for bill
• Progressive-centrist impasse holds up Biden's reform agenda

Internal party warfare between progressive and moderate Democrats over Joe Biden's $3.5tn tax-and-spending package has burst dramatically into the open after Vermont senator Bernie Sanders launched a thinly veiled attack on West Virginia senator Joe Manchin in an op-ed published in the centrist Democrat's home-state newspaper.

Sanders, writing in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, described opponents of the legislation as every Republican in Congress as well as the drug companies, the insurance companies, the fossil fuel industry and the billionaire class".