It’s time for Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to end the drama. When it comes to President Joe Biden’s reckless, inflationary spending bill, the two somewhat centrist Democrats should just say no.
Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, and Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, have both balked at numerous elements of the misnamed “Build Back Better” bill as it went through endless microrevisions. Manchin at least once said he wanted the legislation to be “paid for” entirely, meaning it would add nothing to the federal debt, and that he wanted to see the analysis on that subject from the Congressional Budget Office. He also has said he knows the bill uses accounting “gimmicks” and “shell games” to hide its true, even greater costs in ways not even the CBO is allowed to flag. And he says he wants nothing to do with a bill that will have inflationary effects.
Sinema has balked at a number of tax provisions. And Manchin, as a champion of small businesses and of domestic energy, can’t be happy with an $8 billion tax on home heating and a 50% hike in the number of audits of small businesses.
But the kiss of death for both of them should have been the CBO report that came out late this week. Not even accounting for all the gimmicks that hide some $2 trillion in real costs of “Build Back Better,” the CBO estimates that the bill would increase federal deficits by $367 billion during the next decade. In sum, not even all of the phony numbers and fuzzy math that Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi could invent can hide hundreds of billions of dollars on top of what already is this nation’s highest debt load in its entire history. And, again, if one accounts for the fuzzy math as well, the hundreds of billions become trillions.
Meanwhile, Obama administration economist Steven Rattner, hardly a conservative, wrote Tuesday in the New York Times that Biden’s spending is adding to already dangerous inflation levels. Again, this alone should convince Manchin to oppose “Build Back Better.”
On taxes, not only does the bill break Biden’s promise (in a number of ways, some of them small) to not raise taxes on lower-income residents, but it also contains a sop to the rich in the form of a tax break benefiting the coastal elites at the expense of working people, such as the ones who make up most of Manchin’s West Virginia constituency. Indeed, even the alleged tax breaks for families (which actually are a new form of welfare entitlement) in “Build Back Better” are dwarfed by the size of the giveaway to the wealthy. Again, that analysis comes not from a right-wing advocacy group, but from the respected, decidedly centrist Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
In every way of concern to Sinema and especially Manchin, then, Biden’s monstrosity builds back not better but bigger, in very bad ways: bigger deficits and debt, bigger inflation, bigger giveaways to rich property owners, bigger taxes on workers and small businesses, a bigger IRS, a bigger bureaucracy, a bigger overall tax burden on the economy, and, in all, a massively bigger government.
Why, then, should these two senators keep this foolishness alive? They know it’s a bad bill. According to a neutral West Virginia poll, 74% of Manchin’s voters also know it’s a bad bill. A strong plurality of Sinema’s Arizona constituents thinks likewise.
Manchin and Sinema should stop the madness. Stop the drama. Stop “negotiating.” Just. Say. No.
