Empower Wisconsin | Aug. 8, 2022

Somebody in the Biden administration must have gotten hold of some pretty nasty photos of Joe Manchin.

How else can we explain the West Virginia U.S. Senator’s complete and utter collapse on the Democrat’s absurdly named Inflation Reduction Act, the half-trillion spending bill that won’t cut inflation and may ultimately cost West Virginia’s coal miners — and their senator — their jobs.

Manchin, as moderate a Democrat as the radicalized party can offer these days, had been a repeated thorn in the side of President Joe Biden and his leftist overlords. He has stymied one disastrous big government bill after another, particularly big spending on climate change alarmist measures aimed at killing coal, the lifeblood of West Virginia’s economy.

Up until late last month, Manchin told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to go pound sand when pressed to support a big-spending bill that included climate and tax provisions. Biden’s latest pet spending project, among other things, breaks the president’s promise on raising taxes on the middle class.

“I don’t think during a time of recession you mess with any of the taxes, or increase any taxes,” Manchin said in 2010, when Biden’s boss, President Barack Obama was throwing around massive tax hikes.

Much has changed over the last dozen years, as it changed in about a dozen days in July. And on July 27, Manchin was all smiles with Chuck, heartily endorsing the latest iteration of the $485 billion Inflation Reduction Act.

In so doing, he defies his own assertion that, “We must be honest about the economic reality America now faces if we want to avoid fanning the flames of inflation.”

On that score, Manchin made a deal with the devil.

With inflation eating away an average of $6,800 in purchasing power from the incomes of families with two workers, “the so-called Inflation Reduction Act would impose tax increases, manipulative federal subsidies, and price controls on every American family,”  the Heritage Foundation notes in a pointed analysis.

“The bill would deepen the growing recession, continue to depress household incomes, and will continue to increase prices,” Heritage economic experts warn.

Manchin now endorses a measure that increases spending on corporate welfare and wealth redistribution by roughly $510 billion over the next decade. The true cost would be nearly $200 billion higher after accounting for budget gimmicks, according to Heritage.

“These subsidies could shift trillions of dollars of investment away from conventional energy sources and into green energy pipe dreams,” Heritage experts write.

West Virginia’s traditional energy industry boasts more than 40,000 jobs. Those jobs are on the line with this bill, and Manchin’s constituents know that.

“This shift would leave our economy smaller, less dynamic, and less innovative, and will trap millions in poverty. The bill also contains $250 billion in on-paper spending cuts that simply reflect the burdens of the drug price controls in the bill,” according to Heritage.

So why would Joe Manchin put his state’s economy at risk over a big-spending bill that doesn’t do what it claims?

Either somebody has something on this guy, or he’s just another tool of the radical, big government left.

Either way, Joe Manchin is Empower Wisconsin’s Tool of the Week.