Joe Manchin proves the truth of the old saying "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

 

Remember when it was Kyrsten Sinema who was the “villain” in the Build Back Better soap opera because she couldn’t be pinned down what she was willing to accept? That Joe Manchin was still a “good guy” because at least he was willing to talk about it? Well, we still can’t really say where Sinema stands on the current BBB proposal, but her corrupt villainy has faded into the background since Manchin went on Fox News and announced that he wasn’t going to vote for any version of the BBB plan, no way, no how.

Who can be blamed for being outraged by Manchin’s obvious gamesmanship here? He apparently never had any intention of voting for the BBB, but he strung out the “hope” he would until he couldn’t lie about it anymore. He not only outraged his fellow Democrats with his hypocrisy, but he also angered many of his own working-class constituents and advocates. West Virginia’s branch of the United Mine Workers Union beseeched Manchin to reconsider his decision, since the BBB contains provisions to specifically help coal mine workers—people who Manchin has apparently forgotten about, and who without he can’t make his millions from his coal mine stock.

Manchin has apparently been stung by the well-justified criticism leveled at him, although his suggestion that he might consider a bits and pieces bill going through committees is not only patently absurd, but certain to fail as he well knows. Manchin’s excuses—adding to the national debt, rising inflation—is the height of mass hypocrisy. Why? The Trump tax cut of 2017 is far, far more to blame than anything the Democrats can cook up. Manchin and Sinema are not talking about how that 40 percent cut in the corporate tax rate has affected the federal deficit, or how the percentage of business taxes has decreased from 6 percent to just one percent of GDP. The cynicism of this is almost too unbearable to comprehend, since almost no corporation ever pays anything close to the original 35 percent, and the cutting of the rate to 21 percent simply means that corporations need to spend less money on capital and other improvements for tax breaks.

The right-wing Tax Foundation continues to get its numbers tangled-up in its business-friendly politics, claiming that the cuts have allegedly helped the middle class and ignoring the fact that it hasn’t helped lower-income people, and the rich are still saving far more money in actual sums than the middle class. The Brookings Institute notes that there has been shortfalls of 7 percent each year from expected revenue prior to Trump’s tax cuts. So what does Manchin have to say about that deficit creation? Not a whole lot it seems, although there is some mention of “revisiting” the issue, and a lot of luck with that since—guess who—Sinema opposes any cut into Trump’s boondoggle for the rich.

And let’s not forget who is also to blame for inflation. People want to buy things now, and businesses with all that extra largesse in their pockets still want more, and more. They don’t have to raise prices, but they are doing it anyways. The current fraudulent claim is that businesses are having trouble attracting workers back who were laid off because of the pandemic, and they can’t “produce” enough product. But the current unemployment rate is 4.2 percent, which is only a few ticks above pre-pandemic levels. 

Almost every consumer product (outside of automobiles) in this country seems to have a “Made in China” label on it, so there is no excuse not to “stock up” on items that instead have seen artificial price increases by keeping the stock low. Why are oil prices high? The U.S. imports 15-20 percent of what it uses domestically, and apparently only does so to maintain some kind of leverage with OPEC countries. The U.S. in fact produces so much oil domestically that it is now a net exporter of oil. The stink of corporate and partisan politics of course permeates throughout.

The bottom line, of course, is that for people like Manchin and Sinema, it simply doesn’t matter what they “want”—beyond the fact they don’t want anything, or at least not anything their mega-millions donors don’t want. Since Manchin and Sinema don’t have the guts to take them on, they beat on working people instead. That is the simple fact of the matter. They have fooled us many times with talk of how they were just an inch from the goal line, when it was all a lie; fooling oneself into believing those lies is why we are here now.