Senator Bernie Sanders, the socialist multimillionaire from Vermont, on Sunday accused fellow Democrat Joe Manchin (W.Va.) of sabotaging President Joe Biden.
“He has sabotaged the president’s agenda,” Sanders told ABC This Week anchor Martha Raddatz. “The problem was that we continued to talk to Manchin like he was serious. He was not. This is a guy who’s a major recipient of fossil fuel money.”
Thank goodness for Joe Manchin and fossil fuel money because they might be the only things saving us from the financial ruin of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.
What’s left of it, that is:
On Thursday night, Manchin dealt a devastating blow to Democrats’ hopes for sweeping legislative action this year, telling Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his staff “unequivocally” that he won’t support the climate or tax provisions of a Democratic economic package, two sources familiar with the talks told CNN.
“No matter what spending aspirations some in Congress may have, it is clear to anyone who visits a grocery store or a gas station that we cannot add any more fuel to this inflation fire,” Manchin said last week.
Against all expert predictions, inflation continues to accelerate, hitting yet another 41-year record last month at an annualized 9.1% rate. And if we still calculated inflation the way we did 41 years ago, the actual rate would be much higher.
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Against all common sense, Presidentish Biden continues pushing his inflationary Build Back Better agenda in Congress. BBB would increase spending and debt while piling on productivity-killing regulations. More funny money plus smaller growth equals more inflation, even when Milton Friedman isn’t running the show.
Manchin, seeing the effects of inflation on his red state voters back home, refuses to vote for more of it. As a result, the original $5 trillion Build Back Better agenda was scaled down to $3.3 trillion, and the current House version has been “slimmed down” to a “mere” $1.75 trillion.
(Leave it to CNN to use the phrase “slimmed down” when discussing a spending bill with a headline figure of 13 digits.)
Biden is looking for a big win to turn his fortunes around before the November midterms, but might have to settle for much less.
He left the Mideast embarrassingly empty-handed after having hoped to convince the Saudis to pump more oil.
Now, thanks to Manchin’s “sabotage,” perhaps the most Democrats can get through the Senate is an extension of ObamaCare subsidies and giving Medicare the power to negotiate with drugmakers the prices of certain drugs, among other reforms.
Biden’s big win is looking increasingly like chump change.
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