West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin announced he is opposing Biden’s Build Back Better social spending bill. The knives came out shortly after.
Summary
West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin struck an apparent death blow to the Biden agenda Sunday when he announced of Fox News he will support the Build Back Better social spending bill.
- He also released a statement saying his party is pushing an agenda that will increase the national debt to a level that would “drastically hinder” the country’s ability to “respond to the coronavirus pandemic and geopolitical threats.”
- White House press secretary Jen Psaki released a statement after Manchin’s Fox News appearance blasting Manchin for a “sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position” and said he should “honor his prior commitments.”
- Manchin apparently informed the White House of his decision via an aide and when contacted by the White House before appearing on Fox News, he refused to take their call.
- The announcement from Sen. Manchin is just the latest setback for President Biden who set “historic stakes” (also known as unrealistic expectations) in the first weeks of his presidency by comparing himself to FDR and LBJ.
- Vox came to the defense of Congressional progressives, saying their push to keep the bipartisan infrastructure bill tied to Build Back Better was the right move while a separate piece lays the climate destruction of the world at Manchin’s feet.
- Slate provided Democrats a glimmer of hope, comparing Manchin’s “no” on Build Back Better to his previous proclamation against legislation that overhauls election policy and how that forced everyone to work together to find something Manchin could support.
- The Washington Post joined Vox in their climate alarmism, saying without Build Back Better, the United States would not meet its commitments from the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
- The Daily Wire focused on Squad member Rep Ilhan Omar’s excoriation of Manchin on MSNBC in which she called his reasoning behind opposing Build Back Better “complete bullshit” and that Manchin could never have been trusted.
- RedState and Townhall mocked Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and the White House respectively for their caustic and “disconnected from reality” reactions to Manchin’s announcement.
- The American Thinker pondered the notion that it would be a Democratic senator “who pulled the whole nation back from the cliff’s edge” in opposing “Biden and his communist cohorts.”
Author’s Take
This is a gigantic setback for President Biden and his agenda. It’s one he can scarcely afford right now as the public health industrial complex freaks out over the omicron variant and the apparent admissions that there’s nothing they can do different from the Trump administration. Yet outlets on the left turning up the climate alarmism to 11 after Manchin’s announcement fails to acknowledge reality: American action on reducing emissions produces almost no effect when nations like China and India make no effort to change their environmental policy. They continue to shout that the sky is falling and blame America for all the world’s ills but won’t say a cross word about Communist China.
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© Dallas Gerber, 2021
