Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has somehow managed to become the single most powerful man in a Senate that is currently deadlocked, loves to throw his weight around. It shows in how he speaks. Of course, it is funny to us because all he does is go around foiling whatever bill that the Democrats want to create.
The GOP has to look at him as a honorary member at this point. He does not care one iota about party loyalty. As a senator from a typically overlooked state, the current situation allows him to enjoy an outsize level of importance. Anyone who thinks that he does not revel in it is kidding themselves.
This man wakes up every day and thinks about how he can take a flame thrower to the Biden ambitions of the moment. Lately, Biden has been particularly obsessive about the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill that he wants to pass. Manchin is doing whatever he can to block it and it’s been hilarious to watch.
When you have no real investment in whether a bill passes, it is easy to laugh it up at Manchin. Meanwhile, we are sure that the Democrats are ready to toss him off his houseboat with cinder blocks tied around his ankles. There is just one problem there. They are never going to be able to get rid of Manchin and replace him with a senator who is more willing to play ball.
Let’s be very frank here. The state of West Virginia is not going to get rid of Manchin and elect a Democrat who goes along with Biden. If you remove him, you end up with a Republican and there goes any chance of getting anything done. That’s the bind that the Democrats find themselves in and our hearts certainly go out to them.
It must be hard to know that one of your own is always going to block you from getting your agendas accomplished. Middle-class Americans must be happy, though. Biden’s agenda would include all sorts of money for socialist programs that would be sourced from the average American taxpayer. Manchin may not be intentionally looking out for them here but at least they are being considered in some small way.
“I, for one, won’t support a $3.5 trillion bill, or anywhere near that level of additional spending, without greater clarity about why Congress chooses to ignore the serious effects inflation and debt have on existing government programs,” said Manchin in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. These are concerns that he has been bringing up time and time again.
Manchin was not done there, either. He says that his colleagues have a “strange belief there is an infinite supply of money to deal with any current or future crisis, and that spending trillions upon trillions will have no negative consequence for the future.” These are wise words, to say the least. Far be for it to us to agree with a Democrat but here we are!
We’ll leave you with some more choice words from the Senator:
“An overheating economy has imposed a costly “inflation tax” on every middle- and working-class American. At $28.7 trillion and growing, the nation’s debt has reached record levels. Over the past 18 months, we’ve spent more than $5 trillion responding to the coronavirus pandemic.
Now Democratic congressional leaders propose to pass the largest single spending bill in history with no regard to rising inflation, crippling debt or the inevitability of future crises. Ignoring the fiscal consequences of our policy choices will create a disastrous future for the next generation of Americans,” Manchin continued.
“A pause is warranted because it will provide more clarity on the trajectory of the pandemic, and it will allow us to determine whether inflation is transitory or not,” he reasons. While there are many who are always going to be skeptical of his true motivations, one thing is for sure: he is not caving into Joe Biden anytime soon.
