Joe Manchin says he could be on board with paid leave but wants a new payroll tax on workers to access the social benefit

• Manchin is backing what amounts to a payroll tax on workers and businesses to fund paid leave.

• "I think that basically employers and employees should participate," he told Insider.

• He threw cold water on Pelosi's move to add four weeks of paid leave to the social-spending bill.

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he believed both workers and employers should pay up to kick-start a national paid-leave program.

The Democrat said he could be on board with a paid-leave program but didn't believe it belonged in the social-spending package because Democrats were employing the party-line reconciliation process.

He said it imposed procedural constraints on how he wanted it designed. Warren Gunnels, a top Senate Budget Committee aide for Sen. Bernie Sanders, rejected Manchin's claim on Tuesday that there were impediments from the Senate parliamentarian overseeing the process.

Manchin added that both workers and employers should pay into the measure.

"I think that basically employers and employees should participate," he told Insider. "We have states around this country doing it now. We have countries around the world doing it, and it seems to work very well and does not put a burden on anybody."

Manchin added: "But a person knows what they have and what they can use and how they can use it when they want it."

The West Virginia Democrat is backing what amounts to a payroll tax that's levied on both employers and workers to fund the benefit. Modest payroll taxes were part of an earlier proposal put forward by other Democrats, including Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, to create a 12-week-leave initiative.

President Joe Biden initially sought 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave as part of his spending package. It was federally funded with no payroll taxes levied on workers, which aligned with his campaign pledge to spare families earning below $400,000 annually any tax hikes. But the $500 billion measure recently fell out of the Democratic plan after Manchin objected to its price tag.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Wednesday that four weeks of paid leave was being added back into the $1.75 trillion social-spending framework, a development Manchin said caught him off guard. He didn't seem any likelier to back it on Wednesday.

"That's a challenge, very much of a challenge, and they know how I feel about that," he told reporters.

All 50 Senate Democrats must back the bill so it clears the upper chamber in the face of expected unified Republican opposition and reaches Biden's desk.

Experts said a new payroll tax could help fund the benefit but eat up a sizable chunk of wages, particularly among lower-paid workers.

"A shared-payroll-contribution model is one way to approach paid leave," Vicki Shabo, a paid-leave expert at the New America Foundation, told Insider. "But it isn't the only way, especially when the country's tax structure is so heavily weighted against working people."

Shabo said it was an "earned benefit" with positive effects for workers, families, businesses, and the economy.

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