Manchin Caves, Agrees to $700+ Billion Deal
I can’t imagine that many of Sen. Joe Manchin’s conservative constituents in West Virginia are happy with him for caving to pressure from “progressives” and agreeing with Chuck Schumer to pass a scaled-down but still recklessly expensive “Build Back Better” bill.
He’s Still a Democrat
For all his good service so far, Manchin is still a Democrat for some reason, and he can’t enjoy being treated like a pariah by his party. He wants to help them have something to run on in the midterms. This is the danger of relying on a “moderate Democrat” as the only firewall between America’s interests and those of the radical left. Some held out hope that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema might block it, but I wouldn’t pin my hopes on that.
This is the danger of relying on a “moderate Democrat” as the only firewall between America’s interests and those of the radical left.
The bill will include $739 billion in “revenues” (i.e., taxes) via “IRS tax enforcement, closing the carried interest loophole and establishing a corporate minimum tax,” and it will spend $400 billion on deficit reduction and about $433 billion on energy and climate provisions and expanding Obamacare.
At least the energy spending includes fossil fuels, which Manchin said are reliable and necessary and shouldn’t be removed before new technologies can replace them. That sounds reasonable, but why do taxpayers need to spend billions of dollars to prop up an industry that would be doing fine on its own if Biden would just take his foot off its neck?
Explain It to Us, Joe
Claiming that it didn’t spend trillions of dollars (just hundreds of billions, so no big whoop) and will reduce fuel costs, Manchin said it will be called the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.” But Republican leaders fired back that giving it a positive name doesn’t whitewash the reality that it will spend hundreds of billions of dollars during a time when massive government spending is already fueling rampant inflation, while increasing job-killing taxes on businesses during a recession. As Mitch McConnell tweeted, “First they killed your family’s budget. Now they want to kill your job, too.”
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Back when Manchin blocked the original $5 trillion “Build Back Better” plan, he said, “If I can’t go home and explain to the people of West Virginia, I can’t vote for it.” I eagerly await his explanation to West Virginians as to why we need nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars in new taxes and spending on more Green New Deal crony capitalism.
Mike Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. A New York Times best-selling author, he hosts the weekly talk show Huckabee on TBN.
Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com. Reprinted with permission.
