Manchin Caves

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin stunned Washington late yesterday afternoon. He announced that he had struck a deal with Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer to advance Joe Biden’s latest tax and spend socialist scheme.

They’re calling it the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.” Right. Just like Obamacare was the “Affordable Healthcare Act.” In fact, a big part of this bill involves putting hundreds of billions of additional dollars into Obamacare because it is NOT affordable. 

Progressives were facing an existential crisis with massive Obamacare premium increases set to take effect at the end of year. That largely explains why Manchin caved on this reconciliation bill. 

But his “coal country” constituents will likely be furious over the $370 billion price tag allocated for so-called “alternative” energy. All the solar energy stocks were soaring this morning because we’re going to run the world’s largest economy on solar power, right? 

Wrong!

Not surprisingly, leftists are celebrating Manchin’s first installment on the “Green New Deal.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, praised the Manchin-Schumer agreement as a “very, very major step forward.”

Chuck Schumer said the bill will be, “By a wide margin . . . the greatest pro-climate legislation that has ever been passed by Congress.” Schumer also hailed the bill for including “$60 billion in environmental justice priorities.” 

We all know what that means – more giveaways to far-left activist groups and progressive pet projects. We should call this bill, “Building Biden’s Boondoggles.”

Remember how those “green energy” projects from the Obama/Biden stimulus deal went? Bust and belly up. Why are we doing it again? Well, because the same leftists who failed then are in charge now.

There’s $20 billion to “cut emissions in the agriculture sector.” That’s not exactly going well in other nations that have tried it.  

The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies for expensive electric cars.  Meanwhile, Ford announced it is laying off thousands of workers in order to comply with green energy mandates. Adding insult to injury, Ford and GM are building electric cars in Mexico!

Sen. Mitch McConnell blasted this monstrosity, saying:

“[Democrats] want job-killing tax hikes so they can finance new handouts for wealthy households earning up to $300,000 a year to buy an $80,000 electric car. Democrats want to subsidize rich people buying electric cars that cost more than the median American household earns in an entire year.”

But if the Democrats stick together they will pass it with cackling Kamala Harris, whose pronouns are she/her, breaking the tie.

Sadly for America, we cannot count on Joe Manchin to resist the demands of the left.