The big mystery with regard to the Manchin-Schumer tax-and-spendathon pending in Congress is why so many politically vulnerable Democrats would risk supporting it.
With five House vacancies, Democrats control a 220-210-seat majority in Congress’s lower chamber, which is poised to vote on the bill on Friday. If all 210 Republicans vote against this monstrosity, as expected, then the bill would die if only five Democrats join them. And there are considerably more than five House Democrats who have significant political reasons to oppose, not support, this job-killing, tax-hiking, IRS-arming, energy-limiting, medicine-killing legislation. But they will most likely vote for it.
Democrats Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger each represent districts in Virginia that they won with less than 52% of the vote in the past two elections, with Spanberger in particular barely eking out a victory both times. Spanberger was so spooked by her party’s leftward lurch that she spoke against it in stark terms in an intraparty call right after the 2020 elections. In 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin won both of their districts by large margins as part of his upset victory for governor.
Spanberger’s district features a fairly robust median household income of $77,533, exactly the sorts of middle-income taxpayers most likely to be audited, without the means to fight it, by the new IRS army created by this bill. And Luria faces a tough challenger in state Sen. Jen Kiggans, a Navy vet and geriatric nurse practitioner. If anyone has the standing to blast the Medicare pricing boondoggle in the Manchin bill, it is a geriatric nurse practitioner. Both Spanberger and Luria would be political suckers if, from such center-right-leaning districts, they vote for a bill that so galvanizes opposition while so barely building excitement for it.
In Texas, Democrats Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez would be wise to stick to their guns in saying they are reluctant to vote for the Manchin-Schumer bill if it continues to feature a fine for methane emissions by fuel companies in their districts.
In Iowa, sophomore Democratic Rep. Cindy Axne is coming off of two squeaker victories, both times receiving less than 50% of the vote. The district otherwise leans Republican: Donald Trump won there in 2020. Axne has been under fire in the past 12 months for failing to disclose some $600,000 in stock trades and for trading in stocks she oversees on the Financial Services Committee. She and her husband run a digital design firm, exactly the sort of small business likely to be targeted for IRS audits by the bill’s 87,000 new agents, the vast majority of them in enforcement. The largest industry in her district, healthcare, will be roiled by the bill’s interference with the market for medicines. And as most people in her district drive alone to work (not a lot of carpooling), the bill’s new 16.4-cents-per-barrel tax on crude oil will exacerbate the pain they are feeling at the pump. Axne’s opponent, state Sen. Zach Nunn, is a former Air Force intelligence officer and the director of cybersecurity policy on the National Security Council. He’s formidable. Axne risks her career if she votes for such an obviously liberal bill.
In northeastern Pennsylvania, Trump easily carried the 8th Congressional District in 2020 while Democrat Matt Cartwright held the House seat with less than 52% of the vote. The district is largely white, suburban and rural, and decidedly populist, not exactly the kind of constituencies that will approve of the Manchin bill’s heavy subsidies for rich folks to buy electric cars. Cartwright, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is almost sure to stick to his guns by voting for the bill, but if he does, it may be the last nail in his political coffin.
Then there’s Democrat Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, who barely survived one of the tightest races in the country in 2020 with a 1% victory margin over Thomas Kean, Jr., son of a hugely popular former governor. When the smoke cleared from decennial redistricting, Malinowski was the only Democratic incumbent hurt rather than helped, with his district losing three predominantly Democratic areas. Kean is challenging Malinowski again, and Kean led the latest major poll there in late July by 8 points. There probably isn’t a Democrat in all of Congress who needs more desperately than Malinowski does to prove he can buck his party’s leftist leadership. If he still toes the party line on the Manchin bill, he’s almost surely a political goner in November.
At least a dozen other Democrats likewise have good political reason at least to consider voting no on the Manchin tax hikes. The seven above, though, would be especially foolish to vote in favor. When they do, their Republican opponents will be eager to make them pay.
