(October 21) Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona should call the bluff of the hard left-wingers in their party. They should say they won’t vote for any version of President Joe Biden’s monstrous social spending plan.

Both centrist senators strongly support the separate $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that the Left is holding hostage for its $3.5 trillion social spending blowout, but the two have balked at the size and specifics of Biden’s blowout bill.

They should just dare the leftists to enter the 2022 elections without achieving even the infrastructure plan — a failure that would surely cost Democrats both chambers of Congress and kill all their (mislabeled) “progressive” dreams without affecting Sinema or Manchin at all (both are up for reelection in 2024).

Manchin has said he believes the blowout is far too expensive, that it should not contain taxpayer funding for abortion, that it should not make war on fossil fuels, and that it should not further expand an “entitlement society .” Sinema doesn’t like the size of the bill and hates many of its tax hikes. Both know that there’s no reason they can’t come back later to try passing any of the few parts of the blowout they actually do support.

Both also know that even before the pandemic hit, federal spending was at its highest level in history and Congress and two presidents had spent an astonishing $5.7 trillion in 14 months on top of that for things labeled “COVID relief.” They know the federal debt’s ratio to the overall economy is the highest it has been in U.S. history, and they know that this massive spending is causing inflation that eats away at the paychecks of their lower-income constituents.

Considering all this, voters in neither of their right-leaning states will punish them for refusing to spend even more while risking even higher inflation. And, election considerations aside, the two senators know the inflation is materially bad for their constituents…. [The full column is at this link.]

 

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