Why is anyone shocked? Moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (WV) ticked off fellow Democrats after he wrote an op-ed about why he won’t vote for the $3.5 trillion “human” infrastructure bill.
Are the Democrats dumb? Are they deaf?
Manchin voted to advance the bill, but he has never swayed from his final no vote unless they lower the price tag.
In other words, Manchin’s no vote is not anything new:
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. This is even more important now as the Social Security and Medicare Trustees have sounded the alarm that these life-saving programs will be insolvent and benefits could start to be reduced as soon as 2026 for Medicare and 2033, a year earlier than previously projected, for Social Security.Establishing an artificial $3.5 trillion spending number and then reverse-engineering the partisan social priorities that should be funded isn’t how you make good policy. Undoubtedly some will argue that bold social-policy action must be taken now. While I share the belief that we should help those who need it the most, we must also be honest about the present economic reality.
Manchin urges his colleagues to push the “strategic pause” button on the $3.5 trillion bill. He thinks the pause would “provide more clarity on the trajectory of the pandemic” and “allow us to determine whether inflation is transitory or not.”
How about this for a reminder: “Yet some in Congress 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.”
So the Democrats are losing their mind.
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