We have been wondering why Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has been blocking President Joe Biden’s signature $3.5 trillion bill to transform life for Americans. The senator says the cost is too high even though he clearly understands that it would pull mega-wealth away from the wealthiest companies and individuals to infuse life into the weak middle and working classes. And his voters would not like that? Come on. So what is the deal? Well, we think we have the answer.
Today Representative Katie Parter (D-CA) bluntly called Manchin out on MSNBC’S Stephanie Ruhle Reports. She made the case for the bill which included paid family leave and child care. Then, she pointed out the complete lack of childcare brought the economy to a halt as the coronavirus pandemic continued:
‘I am going to be honest, I have no earthly idea where the stand-alone bill is coming from,” said Porter. Chris Cuomo asked me about it last night. I have no idea who has given you this crazy talking point. Let me be clear.’
‘women, parents, child care aren’t some special need, they’re a building block of our budget and of our economy and the exact same way that environmental standards are, the exact same way that dealing with clean energy investment, dealing with health care. This needs to go in the same bill because it is about the same things.’
But Manchin was not the only Democrat to take Manchin’s position. He is just the visual outlier shouldering all of the criticism:
‘Let me take it in two separate pieces. The first piece, why should child care be part of the bill. I partially addressed this. Let me make a practical point to you, Stephanie.’
‘If we had the men who have run this country for hundreds of years, the wealthy men whose wives and others have taken care of child care so convinced it was important, we would have done something about child care 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago when other countries did it. So, I am not today all of a sudden convinced we have the will to deal with child care when we put off the issue decade after decade after decade.’
Oh, they have pretended to support women and families, send tweets of support, and call out inequalities in pay. Yet, those were just words. When it came to taking action, those guys and gals melted away. So Porter spoke directly about the West Virginia senator’s motives:
‘With regard to Sen. Manchin and others that want to talk about the price tag for this. Let me be clear, you’re a business person, you get it, you can do the math.’
‘If something costs “A,” you have two options. You can negotiate down from ‘A’ or find the money. We have revenue options on the table. There are a huge number of corporations that pay zero taxes and by making savvy revenue choices, for example, using real corporate profit approach to dealing with those corporations that pay zero, we can generate $700 billion. If we use the corporate minimum tax approach, we generate $40 billion. right there. Right there, Sen. Manchin.’
Open Secrets showed Manchin’s political donations here:
Manchin represents a poor state where their incomes ranked poorest in the country. West Virginians have relied on the federal government for over 31.35 percent of their entire budget, reported MoneyGeek. They showed up as the fifth most federally dependent state in the country:
‘Anyone that’s worried about spending, we can generate revenue so it isn’t about $3.5 trillion in spending. We will generate revenue to pay for things. I have the will to do it. The question is does Sen. Manchin or is he more concerned about corporate donors, including the oil and gas industry, big pharmaceutical industry and others getting away with paying nothing under the current tax system.’
State Federal Dependancy Ranking
Three White Lions podcast, Gloria Christie reads her week’s most important news/ commentary stories in the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Gloria Christie Report her newsletter for people on the go. Written in her own unique style with a twist of humor in a briefer version of Bipartisan Report. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery. Find her here on Facebook.
