"No Labels" Is Just A GOP Scam To Re-Elect Donald Trump

There is a movement to run a third candidate for president in the 2024 movement. Those backing this call themselves the No Labels movement.

The idea is that they think the American people deserve a different choice that President Biden or Donald Trump. They have said they would field a candidate that would appeal to voters in both political parties and Independents. 

Current thinking has it that the candidate would be Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Manchin has recently said he is considering becoming an Independent instead of staying in the Democratic Party. Leaving his current party would be a first step in becoming the No Labels candidate.

Is this movement truly a moderate one designed to elect a candidate? NO!

Consider where all of the money supporting this movement is coming from -- big Republican donors!

The truth is that these Republican donors know that Donald Trump is the likely GOP candidate. They don't dislike Trump -- they just don't think he could win in a head-to-head match-up with President Biden.

Their solution is to run a conservative Democrat as a third candidate. They know that the third candidate (most likely Joe Manchin) would have no chance of winning the election. They are hoping though that the candidate could take enough votes away from Biden to give Trump a legitimate chance to win -- if not the popular vote, then the Electoral College (like he did in 2016).

To be blunt, the No Labels movement is nothing more than a scam by rich Republicans to get Trump elected. Don't fall for it!

A vote for No Labels is more than a wasted vote -- it is a vote for Donald Trump!

Biden Should Put More Pressure On Manchin And Sinema

 

With the Republicans in red states passing dozens of new laws to suppress voting, it was extremely disappointing to see Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema vote with the Republicans to allow them to continue filibustering voter rights. They are helping Republicans to cheat in future elections, and need to be pressured to change their stance on the filibuster. Some groups are already doing this, but President Biden needs to also act to put pressure on Manchin and Sinema.

Here is what Dean Obeidallah thinks Biden should do in part of his op-ed at MSNBC.com:

Biden, who owes his presidency in large part to Black voters, must do more than simply hope that voters two years from now will punish Manchin and Sinema. In the first speech he gave after being declared the winner of the 2020 election, Biden promised point blank to the Black community, “You’ve always had my back and I’ll have yours.” At Biden’s news conference on Wednesday, Kristen Welker of NBC News asked Biden about Black voters criticizing him for not making voting rights a priority sooner, to which the President responded, “I’ve had their back my entire career. I’ve never not had their back.”

Biden now needs to show, not tell. For starters, he needs to travel to West Virginia and Arizona to build more grassroots support to pressure Manchin and Sinema.

He should say no to the people Manchin and Sinema want nominated as federal judges or any people they seek to recommend to the Biden administration, a freeze-out that would diminish the two senators’ power and influence. He should also use his influence to prevent the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from helping fund these two senators' 2024 campaigns. Finally, Biden may have to very publicly support a primary challenge against them.

Black Americans were targeted by laws and violence for decades by bigots seeking to stop them from voting. It would be insult to the memory of those African Americans who were killed in the struggle for voting rights to allow these two senators to help roll back the progress made by those who sacrificed so much. And it would be an insult to all today who support Democrats of any race if these two senators can undermine our self-determination without paying a political price.

Biden has a choice to make: Stand with these two Democratic senators who have chosen to preserve the filibuster over democracy or stand with the communities that elected him. What’s it going to be?

The Real Reason Manchin/Sinema Killed Voting Rights Bill

 

On Wednesday, Senators Manchin and Sinema voted to protect the filibuster -- effectively killing the Voting Rights Bill. Why did they do that. They said it was to promote bipartisanship in the Senate, but they have to know that there is no bipartisanship in the current Senate. Some are saying it's to keep the corporate donors pumping money into their campaign coffers. But there may be an even more important reason. Robert Reich gives us that reason. I think he may be right. Here's some of what he had to say:

What can possibly explain Manchin’s and Sinema’s votes against voting rights this week? Why did they create a false narrative that the legislation had to be “bipartisan” when everyone -- themselves included -- knew bipartisanship was impossible? Why did they say they couldn’t support changing the filibuster rules when only last monththey voted for an exception to the filibuster that allowed debt ceiling legislation to pass with only Democratic votes? Why did they co-sponsor voting rights legislation and then vote to kill the very same legislation? Why did Manchin vote for the “talking filibuster” in 2011 yet vote against it now?

I’ve suggested that the answer to all these questions could be found in the giant wads of corporate cash flowing into their campaign coffers. But as I’ve watched the two senators closely and spoken about them with members of Congress as well as Hill staff, I’ve come to the conclusion this isn’t it – or at least not all of it.

The corporate money explanation leaves out the single biggest factor affecting almost all national politicians I’ve dealt with: Big egos. Manchin’s and Sinema’s are now among the biggest.

Before February of last year, almost no one outside West Virginia had ever heard of Joe Manchin, and almost no one outside of Arizona (and probably few within the state) had ever heard of Kyrsten Sinema. Now, they’re notorious. They’re Washington celebrities. Their photos grace every major news outlet in America.

This sort of attention is addictive. Once it seeps into the bloodstream, it becomes an all-consuming force. I’ve known politicians who have become permanently and irrevocably intoxicated by it.

I’m not talking simply about power, although that’s certainly part of it. I’m talking about narcissism – the primal force driving so much of modern America, but whose essence is concentrated in certain places such as Wall Street, Hollywood, and the United States Senate.

Once addicted, the pathologically narcissistic politician can become petty in the extreme, taking every slight as a deep personal insult. I’m told that Manchin asked Biden’s staff not to blame him for the delay of “Build Back Better,” and was then infuriated when Biden suggested Manchin bore some of the responsibility. “You want to understand why Manchin stabbed Biden in the back on voting rights?” one House member told me this week. “It’s because he’s so pissed off at Ron Klain [Biden’s chief of staff].”

Paradoxically, a large enough slight played out on the national stage can also enthrall a pathologically narcissistic politician. Several people on the Hill who have watched Sinema at close range since she became a senator tell me she relished all the negative attention she got when she gave her very theatrical thumbs down to increasing the minimum wage, and since then has thrilled at her burgeoning role as a spoiler. . . .

Not all senators are egomaniacs, of course. I had the good fortune to work closely with the late Paul Wellstone, who was always eager to give others credit while being the first to take any blame. I know several now serving who have their egos firmly in check — including Mark Kelly, Raphael Warnock, Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. Most of the rest lie on an ego spectrum ranging from inflated to pathological.

Manchin and Sinema are near the extreme. As I said, neither had much national attention prior to the last February. But once they got a taste of the national spotlight, they couldn’t let go. They must have figured that the only way they could keep the spotlight focused on themselves was by threatening to do what they finally did this week — shafting American democracy.

Manchin/Sinema Vote To Help The GOP Suppress Voting

Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema have been threatening to help Republican maintain their filibuster against the Democratic bill to protect the right of all citizens to vote. On Wednesday night, they followed through on their threat.

Both of the senators claim they support the bills that would protect voting, and indeed, they voted yes on the motion to end the Gap filibuster. But it's easy to vote that way when you know there is no chance of the bill being considered. And sure enough, 50 Republican voted to maintain the filibuster against the voting rights bill (9 more than was needed to maintain the filibuster).

Then another vote was held. This vote was on whether to change the filibuster rules and allow a majority vote on the voting rights bill. It would not end the filibuster, It would just change the rule for only the voting rights bill. That would happen only if the Democrats got 50 votes and the vote of Vice-President Harris.

If Manchin and Sinema really supported the voting rights bill, this was their chance to show it -- and still maintain the filibuster. But they voted to kill the voting rights bill by voting to not change the filibuster. They voted to allow the Republicans to continue to filibuster the bill -- meaning it could not be passed without 60 votes.

Manchin and Sinema will probably still claim to support the bill, but that would be a lie. They had their chance to help pass it, and they refused to do it. They still consider an archaic Senate rule to be more important that the right of every U.S. citizens to vote.

They should be ashamed of themselves, but they aren't. I am left to wonder why they continue to call themselves Democrats.

We Must Protect The Right To Vote Or Lose Our Democracy

 

Anyone who has been paying attention knows our democracy is in trouble. The loser in our last presidential election has been telling a big lie -- that he won the 2020 election, but it was stolen from him through massive fraud. It's not true, but he has convinced many people that it is.

He even encouraged his deluded supporters to stage a violent insurrection at our U.S. Capitol building. When that failed, Republicans in red states began passing a whole raft of laws to suppress voting and give GOP legislatures the ability to change the outcome of voting in many states. The goal, of course, is to make sure Republicans will win future elections -- even if they have to cheat to do so.

If we allow these anti-democracy Republicans to be successful, we will lose our democracy. It will be replaced by an authoritarian government that refuses to recognize the will of the voters.

This must be stopped, and the only way to stop it is to pass federal laws to protect the right of citizens to vote and to protect the valid outcome of that voting. There are bills to do exactly that. They have been passed in the House, and are currently pending approval in the Senate.

The problem is that Democrats (who support the bills) only have 50 votes in the Senate. And the Republicans are filibustering the voting rights bills -- meaning it will take 60 votes to pass them. There is no chance of getting those 60 votes, since the Republicans are unanimous in their opposition.

The only way the bills can be passed to protect voting (and our democracy) is for the filibuster to be banned on voting rights bills. This could be done if all 50 Democrats voted to do that, and Vice-President Harris casts the tie-breaking vote.

Unfortunately, there are two Democrats -- Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema -- who love the filibuster. They even refuse to carve out an exception for voting rights and to protect election results. They seem to think that an archaic Senate rule (the filibuster) that is not in the Constitution is more important than the right of every citizen to vote. More important than democracy itself, which depends on the right to vote.

Their refusal is making it possible for Republicans to suppress the vote, and possibly even overturn the will of the voters in some states. They are enabling a future coup by anti democracy Republicans. 

Their behavior is shameful!

Manchin's Excuses For Keeping Filibuster Don't Make Sense

 

Joe Manchin is still refusing to do anything about the Senate filibuster, and his excuses for protecting the filibuster are making no sense at all. The following is part of an op-ed on this by Greg Sargent in The Washington Post:

Everyone had a grand old time mocking Sen. Joe Manchin III for claimingon Tuesday that we’ve had the filibuster for 232 years. This is historically false. What’s more, the West Virginia Democrat’s deeper argument here — that in some sense the filibuster preserves a vision of the Senate in keeping with that of the framers — is also profoundly off-base.

But now Manchin has expanded even further on that deeper argument. And the case he made in this regard captures the essential fallacy of the pro-filibuster position as clearly as one could possibly expect.

The stakes are high. Democrats are making one final push for a package of protections for voting rights and democracy. Given uniform GOP opposition, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) will hold a vote soon on whether to suspend the filibuster to pass them. . . .

Manchin has now offered a new justification for this position.

“I mean, voting is very important. It is a bedrock of democracy,” Manchin told reporters Tuesday. “But to break the opportunity for the minority to participate completely — that’s just not who we are.”

This idea, that even a temporary filibuster carve-out betrays “who we are,” essentially posits that the Senate supermajority requirement is in some sense more faithful to American liberal constitutionalism than protecting voting rights is.

This is absurd. First, the idea that nixing the filibuster would “break the opportunity for the minority to participate completely” is unintentionally revealing about Manchin’s true stance. It’s false on its face: Needing a simple majority to pass legislation doesn’t stop senators from the minority party from entering into negotiations with the majority party to try to influence said legislation.

In fact, ending the filibuster might increase the incentive for a bloc of GOP senators to seek such negotiations. Without it, bills could pass with a majority of fewer than 60 votes, meaning, say, five moderate Republicans would have more opportunities to get on legislation with a real chance of passage, burnishing their bipartisan cred while delivering for constituents. Moderate Democrats who want to be seen working with Republicans would help that happen.

What ending the filibuster actually would stop is the opportunity for the minority party to participate entirely on its own terms. With the filibuster, virtually nothing can pass. This facilitates and encourages a deliberate opposition strategy of denying the president’s party legislative victories to make the government under that party more dysfunctional.

This is the reality of the “opportunity for the minority to participate” that Manchin is personally enabling. And it actually reduces the opportunity for more bipartisan legislation to pass — the opposite of what he suggests.

Second, you know who is actually working hard to “break the opportunity of the minority to participate”? GOP-controlled state legislatures are. They are passing restrictions on voting access in many states, and they’re doing so by simple majority — on a largely partisan basis.

Manchin himself agrees this is a serious problem. That’s why he supports the Freedom to Vote Act, which would curb such GOP efforts by creating baseline standards for early voting, same-day registration and voting by mail, while also limiting partisan capture of election machinery.

What Manchin opposes is achieving those monumentally important things on a partisan basis. But here’s the rub: Either Republicans will keep restricting voting on a partisan basis, or Democrats will protect and expand voting access on a partisan basis. Partisanship will prevail either way. The only question is which partisanship prevails.

Manchin Shows His Misogyny By Killing The BBB Bill

 

Much has been made of Manchin's uncaring attitude toward child poverty by killing the Build Back Better Bill, since it will end the child tax credit (which pulled millions of children out of poverty). But it's not just children that Manchin is hurting. His action also hurts millions of women in the United States, and shows that he cares as little about women as children. He is a misogynist!

The following is part of a post by Jessica Levinson at MSNBC.com:

Failure to pass President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan will be a failure for women, particularly those who are poor or working class. The plan, which is at the top of Biden’s legislative wish list, is a $1.8 trillion initiative to strengthen this country’s safety net and address our climate crisis. The plan would, among other things, provide free preschool for 3- and 4-years-olds, fund child care, paid family leave, a child tax credit, care for elderly and disabled people, rebates and tax credits to promote clean energy, and an expanded Medicare program.

We know that women bear the lion’s share of the responsibility of taking care of children and elderly relatives. We know that these inequalities were exacerbated during the pandemic, as women took on three times as many unpaid child care hours as men did. Almost 2 million women were also forced out of the workforce, and out of their incomes.

A failure to pass Build Back Better would quickly follow Biden signing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. The majority of the jobs created by those government programs will be performed by men. This is no surprise, men currently hold 90 percent of infrastructure jobs. That’s not to say the infrastructure package is bad law; it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t spend government money on jobs that will be held predominantly by men. It means that the passage of the infrastructure bill would make the impact of not passing Build Back Better more glaring. The people who will feel the failure of the Build Back Better plan the most deeply are women. . . .

How can one Senate Democrat thwart the will of almost every other Democratic lawmaker? Because the Senate is, and was designed to be, a deeply anti-democratic institution. The Senate is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, except that Democrats now represent more than 43 million more people than Republicans. The 1.8 million West Virginians represent approximately 0.5 percent of the American population of 333 million people.

All of this — the partisan divisions and the anti-democratic institutions — is maddening and points to deep structural problems in our society. But it shouldn’t cause us to ignore another structural problem in our country: gender inequality.

It’s worth asking why the man who pulled the plug on the Build Back Better plan did so. Manchin reportedly told his colleagues that he thought poor parents would use their child tax credit payments for drugs, not for their children. The child tax credit, which will lapse if it is not continued, has cut childhood poverty by 30 percent. Research indicates that 90 percent of low-income families use money from the child tax credit for necessities and education. Manchin also apparently thought people would commit fraud and lie about being sick if a proposed sick leave policy were passed.

It is at best paternalistic, and at worst misogynistic that Manchin thinks so little of his constituents that he is willing to torpedo expanding portions of the safety net that will disproportionately assist women in being full members of our society.

We live in a society rife with inequalities. Our government had the opportunity to try to remedy some of them. This is not about giving women extra benefits, it is about remedying detriments. Many women, particularly poor women, start most races miles behind the starting line. The Build Back Better plan would have been part of an effort to help them begin the race at the same time and place as everyone else.

Does Manchin Care About Child Poverty?

The following is part of an op-ed by Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post:

As hard as it is to believe, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III reportedly blew up negotiations for the Build Back Better bill not over provisions to address climate change or tax proposals affecting wealthy Americans, but over the child tax credit that has lifted millions of children out of poverty. That makes even less sense considering Manchin’s home state of West Virginia is among the poorest states in the country.

The West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy reports: “Congress temporarily increased the Child Tax Credit (CTC) for more than 65 million children nationally, including 346,000 in West Virginia where it reaches 93 percent of children.” Reducing or eliminating it would amount to driving “50,000 of the lowest income children in the state below the poverty line or deeper into poverty.” (Manchin’s state ranks 47th in food security.)

Nevertheless, The Post reports: “Sen. Joe Manchin III last week made the White House a concrete counteroffer for its spending bill, saying he would accept a $1.8 trillion package that included universal prekindergarten for 10 years, an expansion of Obamacare and hundreds of billions of dollars to combat climate change. . . . But the West Virginia Democrat’s counteroffer excluded an extension of the expanded child tax credit the administration has seen as a cornerstone of President Biden’s economic legacy.”

Manchin was also apparently afraid that poor parents would use the money for illegal drugs, and HuffPost reported that “Manchin has also told colleagues he believes that Americans would fraudulently use the proposed paid sick leave policy, specifically saying people would feign being sick and go on hunting trips.” It’s rare for a politician to express such contempt for his own constituents, let alone poor children.

In fact, the Census Bureau reported in October that “Three in 10 families that received monthly Advance Child Tax Credit (CTC) payments spent them on kids’ school expenses, and 1 in 4 families with young children used them to cover child care costs, according to new results from the U.S. Census Bureau’s experimental Household Pulse Survey.” In addition, about 40 percent used the money to pay off debt. “The share of respondents that reported ‘mostly spending’ them increased from 27% to 33% during that period, in line with prior research that found that the CTC decreased household economic hardships, and that households with children were hardest hit during the pandemic.”

The poorer the family, the greater chance the CTC will be spent on necessities. As Bloomberg reported, “Another report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found 91% of households making less than $35,000 per year used the money to pay for food, shelter, clothing and other necessities. Black and Hispanic families were more likely to use their credits on education-related costs, such as school supplies.”. . .

The senator’s take on poor children and their struggling parents is appalling — even more appalling than misleading his colleagues and the White House about his support for the bill.

Why Did Manchin Kill The Build Back Better Bill?

This cartoon is by Joe Thibodeau.

On Sunday, Joe Manchin bragged on Fox News that he would vote against the Build Back Better bill. That effectively kills the bill, because it needed the votes of all 50 Democrats and Independents to pass. Why did he do that? Is it because he's rich -- he has his and doesn't care about anyone else -- especially the poor, workers, and middle class who are struggling to keep their heads above water in this inflationary recession? That's my opinion.

Here's what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich thinks at robertreich.sunstack.com:

I can’t resist opining on West Virginia senator Joe Manchin’s motive for announcing yesterday he won’t support the “Build Back Better” social and environmental package. He delivered the deathblow on Fox News Sunday (after refusing to take Joe Biden’s phone call presumably asking him not to make the announcement).

The reasons Manchin gave are absurd on their face. He must know that.

He said he’s worried about inflation and the national debt. But Build Back Better would be paid for with tax increases on big corporations and the wealthy — so it won’t have any bearing on inflation or the debt. More to the point, its sticker price of $1.75 trillion covers 10 years, during which the Congressional Budget Office projects $288 trillion worth of economic output. So a Build Back Better plan of $1.75 trillion or would amount to roughly 0.6% of gross domestic product — or slightly more than the 0.5% of GDP Americans spent last year on tobacco. And that doesn’t cover all the benefits to the economy of investing in K-12 education, childcare, and so on. 

Manchin also claimed he’s worried about the impact of the latest COVID surge on the economy. But if COVID slows the economy, that’s even more justification for federal spending that strengthens social safety nets. And even more reason to support a program that could possibly stimulate the economy in the short run. 

He said he can’t face his constituents in West Virginia without renouncing “Build Back Better.”But on a per-person basis, West Virginians would be among the biggest beneficiaries of the legislation in all America. One out of four West Virginians over 65 have no natural teeth, for example — the highest rate in the nation. Biden’s original bill provided dental benefits under Medicare.

So what’s really motivating Manchin? Four possibilities:

West Virginia is a coal state, and Manchin doesn’t want to do anything that might dampen coal production (the bill has a number of environmental measures). Possibly, but Manchin must know there’s no long-term future in mining coal regardless of what happens to this legislation. There are far fewer coal jobs left in West Virginia than there are jobs in health care. The legislation would, however, help West Virginians transition from coal to new and better jobs. And help them survive in the meantime.

He’s self-dealing. He owns stock valued at between $1 million and $5 million in Enersystems, a coal brokerage firm he founded in 1988? Last year he made half a million dollars in Enersystems dividends (roughly three times the $174,000 salary he made last year as a senator).

He’s takes bribes. He collects more campaign money from coal, oil, and gas companies than any other senator. (In June, Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy told the Greenpeace investigative unit that Manchin participated in weekly meetings with company operatives.)

He loves the power and attention. Who ever heard of Joe Manchin before the Biden administration? A minor-league Democratic senator from a small, poor state suddenly has the national spotlight and has become the biggest spoiler in the Democratic Party.

Manchin Says He Will Kill The Build Back Better Bill

Joe Manchin went on Fox News on Sunday and said he will not vote for President Biden's Build Back Better Bill. Since the bill needed all 50 Democratic votes in the Senate to pass, Manchin's announcement effectively kills the bill.

Manchin has always opposed the bill. Initially, he said he opposed it because it cost too much. He said he would not support it unless it was reduced to no more than $1.5 trillion (over ten years). Democrats believed him, and reduced the bill to less than $2 trillion (actually about $1.7 trillion).

But that didn't placate Manchin, because he was lying about the cost being the reason. Manchin owns several million in coal stocks. He opposed the bill because it included significant money to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels to attack global warming. He doesn't want that because, not only him but also his family, are too invested in coal.

He also opposes paid family leave (even though we are the only developed nation that does not have family leave guaranteed). He claims it would be socialism. But what it really is, is help for working families across the nation. Manchin has cast his lot against ordinary Americans.

In killing the bill, he is also killing more financial help for college students. He is killing the child tax credit, which has lifted many families out of poverty. He is killing help for working families to get decent child care. He is killing everything in the bill that would help ordinary Americans. But he rich, so he doesn't care.

If you are surprised by Manchin's announcement, then you have not been paying attention. Manchin has always been opposed to the bill. He should be ashamed of himself!

And don't expect him to help pass the voting rights bill either.  

Progressives Gave Manchin Complete Control Of BBB Bill

Democrats and media talking heads are celebrating the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. I understand why. The bill was badly needed by the country, and it gives the illusion that Democrats can get things done in Congress.

But I'm not at all sure the passage right now was a good thing, because of the effect it will have on the Build Back Better Bill. The BBB bill might even be a more important bill, because it would help millions of Americans. It would make the economy fairer to working and lower middle class workers -- making their lives easier, and even pulling many out of poverty.

I don't doubt that Democratic moderates in the House will keep their word, and pass the bill in about 10-14 days. But then the bill will go to the Senate -- and that's where the real problem begins.

When Democrats won the White House and control of both houses of Congress, many progressives saw the opportunity to finally pass transformative legislation -- legislation that would close the wealth and income gap, and give most Americans a path to the middle class.

They really wanted a $10 trillion bill (over 10 years), paid for by higher taxes on the rich and corporations. But they know they had to compromise to get the legislation passed. They negotiated their bill down to $6 trillion, then to $3.5 trillion, and finally to $1.7 trillion. No one can say the progressives weren't willing to compromise. They compromised far more than those in the party opposing the bill.

The biggest opponents were Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema -- Senate Democrats. President Biden told progressives that he believed Manchin and Sinema would vote for the $1.7 trillion version of the bill, but neither has actually publicly said they would vote for it -- and Manchin has been very vocal about opposing elements of it.

The only real power that progressives in the House had was their refusal to pass the infrastructure bill until the BBB bill was also passed (and both Manchin and Sinema want infrastructure passed, because they had negotiated it with GOP). But by passing the infrastructure bill before the BBB bill, and without getting public assurances from Manchin (and Sinema), the progressives have given up the only leverage they had.

Now Joe Manchin has complete control over the Build Back Better bill, and he can do what he wants with it (because Democrats can't pass it without his vote).

Let's be clear about one thing. Joe Manchin is not a moderate. He's a conservative -- and conservatives do not care about making things easier for anyone (but the rich and corporations). They want the status quo to remain intact. And Manchin's statements show that is what he wants. He doesn't want transformative change.

He will undoubtably try to amend the House version of the BBB bill, and he has the power to do that. The 50 Republicans will be happy to help him cut large portions out of the bill. They won't vote for it in the end, but they'll love to help Manchin make it a much worse and less effective bill.

Manchin doesn't like paid family leave, so he'll likely cut it from the bill.

Manchin has millions invested in fossil fuels (especially coal), so he'll likely cut out the climate change portions of the bill.

Manchin's daughter is the CEO of a Big Pharma company, so he'll likely cut out the negotiating of drug prices.

And he probably won't stop there. He's already said the bill would create an entitlement society.

I don't think he'll directly kill the BBB bill (although he might), but what's left of the bill after he puts it on his chopping block will certainly not be transformative. It will be a sham that doesn't help anyone much (except maybe for the rich and corporations who will not be forced to pay for a transformative bill).

The Build Back Better bill is now on life support, and "Doctor" Manchin is in charge of its health. That's not good!

Entitled Senator Says Help For Others Is An "Entitlement"

 

Senator Joe Manchin is a rich and privileged white man. He is one of the "entitled" in our current economy and society. And he likes it that way. But he does not like efforts to help ordinary working and poor Americans. In a strange bit of irony, he calls that "entitlements". Evidently, he's bought into the Republican mantra that the only help the government should give is to the rich and powerful.

Here's how Ja'han Jones describes it at MSNBC.com:

Sen. Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat from West Virginia, has been a stickler over the price of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan during his party’s monthslong negotiations over what should be included in the bill.

As if the tangible impacts of Manchin’s penny-pinching weren’t enough of a blow to the country, he’s also used the spotlight he’s been given to peddle old-timey cliches about “entitlement” and fiscal responsibility that sound like they’ve been borrowed from a Heritage Foundation pamphlet.

Manchin, a key holdout whose vote is crucial to the bill passing, has deployed his outsize power to strip and water down progressive plans to fight climate change, expand health coverage and invest in social programs like paid family leave. And he wants us to know it’s about his principles. 

Last month, Manchin told reporters he “cannot accept our economy, or basically our society, moving towards an entitlement mentality” and called for Democrats’ social welfare proposals to only benefit those in desperate need.

Manchin’s concerns about a rising sense of entitlement are hypocritical, and he’d have a better chance of selling his vision for America if his state was in better shape.

West Virginia has one of the highest poverty rates in the country, its most populous county is facing a horrifying HIV outbreak and its infrastructure continues to be battered by the climate crisis. To Manchin, constituents who expect sweeping government fixes to these maladies are asking for too much.

It’s ironic, since Manchin and his family have deep financial ties to the coal industry in West Virginia, a dying industry that’s heavily subsidized by the federal government. He has at least $1 million in holdings in his son's coal brokerage firm, and he’s raised more than $400,000 from oil and gas lobbyists over the last few months alone.

The Manchin family enjoys a lavish lifestyle thanks to industries propped up by the nation’s taxpayers, yet he lectures Americans about the value of hard work. They’re enjoying the fruits of corporate welfare programs — and Manchin certainly feels entitled to those programs given how hard he’s fighting for them over climate-conscious alternatives — but he apparently believes that sense of entitlement should be his alone. 

The Two Most Selfish Democrats In The U.S. Congress

The following is just part of an op-ed at MSNBC.com by Michael Cohen. I think Mr. Cohen may have a valid point:

On Thursday morning, the White House unveiled a framework for the Democrats’ massive budget package, and surprisingly — after months of negotiations that seemed to be going nowhere — it looks pretty good.

Yet, on Friday morning, the bill was still hanging in the balance because of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two of the most selfish senators I’ve seen in my decades of following national politics. For months, these two have bullied the White House and progressive Democrats into bending to their will. Key liberal priorities such as paid family leave and medical leave and measures to reduce prescription drug costs, provide two years of free community college and repeal key elements of the Trump tax cuts have been jettisoned. The total cost of the bill has been cut in half — from $3.5 trillion to around $1.75 trillion — all to satisfy Manchin’s and Sinema’s demands.

House progressives have begrudgingly accepted these changes because most seem to understand that even half a loaf is better than none. But they have maintained one unshakable and eminently reasonable demand: They would not vote on the massive infrastructure bill supported by Manchin and Sinema until the two make clear their support for the budget package. Yet, Thursday, Manchin and Sinema were still refusing to make their intentions clear. Seemingly, the two attention-starved senators can’t bear to give up the media spotlight they have hogged unto themselves.

By making it all about them, Manchin and Sinema are making it increasingly difficult for Democrats to focus on what their framework budget agreement would accomplish. . . .

Manchin and Sinema are acting as though they were the ones on the presidential ballot last November. And while the Democrats’ narrow majority in the Senate gives individual senators outsize power, no one else in the caucus is as focused on being pains in the neck like Sinema and Manchin are.

Like many political observers, I’ve given up trying to understand Manchin’s and Sinema’s motivations. From a political perspective, they are undercutting their own party and decreasing the chances that Democrats will be able to hold on to the majority in midterm elections next year. In pushing for the removal of paid leave, tuition-free community college and lower drug prices for seniors, they are taking away winning campaign messages for Democrats in 2022. Sinema’s obstinance has led to a plummeting of her approval ratings in Arizona and an increasingly likely primary challenge. Manchin, who won re-election in 2018 by a mere 3 points is likely a long shot to win again in 2024, no matter how much he tries to distance himself from the party’s liberal wing.

None of those objections makes much sense, unless we accept that both senators have an outsize need to be the center of media attention in Washington. Democrats may get their bill passed in the end, but because of the narcissism displayed by Manchin and Sinema they will be left wondering about what could have been.

In Rich Nation, All Citizens "Entitled" To Economic Fairness

 In the negotiation on the Build Back Better bill, Manchin is sticking to his cap of only $1.5 trillion over 10 years. And he's starting to sound more and more like a right-wing politician. Now he says the United States is in danger of becoming an "entitlement society", like that would be a bad thing. But in a nation as rich as the U.S., aren't all citizens entitled to economic fairness? Should the rich be the only people to benefit from our economy?

Here is some of what Zeeshan Aleem says about Manchin's position at MSNBC.com:

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has mostly been cagey about what he wants trimmed from President Joe Biden’s sweeping Build Back Better Act. One of just two Democrats holding up the bill in the Senate, he’s said he wants to shave $2 trillion off the reform package that could seal much of Biden’s policy legacy, yet he has offered little in the way of specifics.

But according to a recent Axios report, Manchin has finally at least made a broad gesture toward how Democrats might go about cuts: He said they must choose only one of three major policies in the bill intended to help families — the expanded child tax credit, paid family medical leave or subsidies for child care. The other two should be killed. . . .

It also seems to dovetail with his recent criticism that America is at risk of becoming an “entitlement society” should it pass too much social spending meant to assist households economically. The subtext of his demand is that America can’t remain America if people feel they have rights to services like child care.

All of that is a shame. All these policies are not just worth demanding as rights, but they also make for smart economic policy.

Manchin has fixated on aggressively shrinking the top-line figure, as if there’s something inherently menacing to the economy about passing a $3.5 trillion bill. But to describe it as self-indulgence is odd: The bill would involve spending just 1.2 percent of our projected national income over the next 10 years on a range of social policiesthat would help reduce the size of the many holes in our social safety net, and much of it would be financed through taxes on corporations and the rich. In turn, that would allow for more participation in the workforce and increased economic productivity.

As a number of Nobel Prize-winning economists, including former chief economist for the World Bank Joseph Stiglitz, have pointed out, concerns from Manchin and some centrists and conservatives that the package could cause unmanageable debt and inflation are not well-founded. It would do the opposite. "Because this agenda invests in long-term economic capacity and will enhance the ability of more Americans to participate productively in the economy, it will ease longer-term inflationary pressures," they wrote in an open letter in September. . . .

Amidst a tense back-and-forth with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., over the bill, Manchin this week saidhe thinks this bill could tilt the U.S. away from being “a compassionate, rewarding society” and toward becoming an “entitlement society.”

That’s a backward way of thinking about these matters. The U.S. is a major outlier among affluent nations in how little it spends on providing social services for families. Most advanced capitalist nations spend far more on social services including child care, child allowances and paid family leave, and these are not societies racked by slothfulness and inefficiency. Instead, many have seen the benefits of policies such as robust family paid leave have a small impact on employers, level the playing field, improve child development and boost long-term economic growth.

Manchin fears the idea of Americans feeling “entitled” to certain arrangements with the government when it comes to child care. But talk of entitlement is often a loaded buzzword wielded by conservatives to undermine a concept that’s very dear to Americans: rights. In this country, we constantly talk about rights tied to civil liberties such as freedom of speech or freedom from warrantless searches. In a country as affluent as America, it seems quite sensible to extend discussion of rights to the economic sphere as well. . . .

In a democratic country with extraordinary wealth distributed extremely unequally like ours, it is reasonable to demand that every child has access to the resources and care needed to start a good life.

Democrats should not back off of Manchin’s entitlement fear-mongering. Instead we should be asking him: What’s wrong with believing that every child has a right to a decent life?