When President Joe Biden’s White House says something ridiculous like its trillion-dollar spending bill will “ease inflationary pressures,” who is the target audience for such tripe?
If it is West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, Biden’s propaganda is failing miserably.
Asked yesterday if he believed White House claims that Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda would control inflation, Manchin responded, “I haven’t seen that. I’ve heard that. I don’t know how you control inflation when the first year of spending is going to be quite large.”
Manchin is dead right. The Congressional Budget Office has confirmed that Biden’s Build Back Better legislation would add $791 billion to federal deficits in just five years. And the true 10-year cost is trillions more, once all the budget gimmicks are removed.
Some Senate Democrats have reportedly grown weary of Manchin’s refusal to commit to Build Back Better and want to force him to vote one way or another. Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono told Burgess Everett she’d like to “put it to a vote and let people know where people stand.”
Other Democrats want to continue working with Manchin to get to a yes. “What happens if it goes down? We can walk around and say we tried? That doesn’t really sell,” Montana Sen. Jon Tester told Everett. “There have to be conversations with Joe to make sure you’re not moving into a failure situation.”
It’s not clear what Democrats could do to get Manchin on board. There is nothing in the legislation that Manchin really wants, and he is outright hostile to the bill’s climate provisions.
Manchin already got his bipartisan infrastructure bill. He can run for reelection on that. If other Democrats are counting on touting Build Back Better for their campaigns, they are looking increasingly out of luck.
