We have some thoughts about Manchin’s priorities

This piece was originally published in the December 20, 2021 edition of CAP Action’s newsletter, the Progress Report. Subscribe to the Progress Report here.

‘‘Politicians like Joe Manchin spend a lot of time thanking veterans for our service. Those same politicians wasted trillions of dollars and thousands of our lives to ‘nation build’ overseas. If they really wanted to honor us, they’d invest in the communities we signed up to serve.” – Lucas Kunce

Senator Joe Manchin went on Fox News Sunday to announce that after months of indicating that he would support the Build Back Better Act, he has reversed his position. While many scrambled to make sense of his reversal, others pointed out that just last month, Manchin voted for a $7.7 trillion Pentagon budget, which is four and a half times more expensive than Build Back Better. 

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Joe Manchin represents one of America’s poorest states, with a per capita income of just over $26,000. Yet he’s standing between working West Virginians and immediate economic relief. Under the Build Back Better Act, a West Virginia family of four with two young kids would save nearly $10,000 a year on health care, child care, and more.

IN THE NEWS

• On the news of Senator Manchin’s opposition to Build Back Better, investment giant Goldman Sachs scaled-down US GDP projections for the coming year. “We had already expected a negative fiscal impulse for 2022 as a result of the fading support from COVID-relief legislation enacted in 2020 and 2021, and without BBB enactment, this fiscal impulse will become somewhat more negative than we had expected,” analyst Jan Hatzius wrote, explaining the slashing of their GDP projection for the first quarter of 2022.
• Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer was in Detroit  Monday to sign  a $1.5 billion bill designed to spur economic growth in Michigan. In the same way that Build Back Better targets strategic growth points for the national economy, a number of projects have already been approved for funding under the bill, including two that will support the state’s famous automotive industry after hard times brought about by decades of outsourcing and the past two years of the pandemic.

WHAT WE’RE READING

• Team Biden is Making a List: Favorite Year 1 Numbers by Mike Allen (Axios)
• 4 Student-Loan Relief Measures Biden Should Implement if He Does Not Extend the Payment Pause, Organizations Say by Aeylet Sheffey (Insider)
• How the Supreme Court Throwing Out Abortion Rights Could Undo Much of Women’s Economic Progress Since the 1970s by Oma Seddiq and Madison Hoff (Insider)
• Why Trump Appears Deeply Unnerved as Capitol Attack Investigation Closes In by Hugo Lowell (The Guardian)
• Donald Trump Reveals He Got Vaccine Booster Shot, Gets Booed by Tour Crowd by Khaleda Rahman (Newsweek)

This piece was originally published in the December 20, 2021 edition of CAP Action’s newsletter, the Progress Report. Subscribe to the Progress Report here.