Never Trust a Democrat.
This is the message all Americans should have learned when “moderate” Democratic Senator Joe Manchin decided to stab his West Virginia constituents in the back last month by making a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pass the deceptively named “Inflation Reduction Act.”
For much of Manchin’s tenure, he’s branded himself as somewhat of a moderate and reasonable type of Democrat who would keep his party’s leftist tendencies in check. Although he voted to convict President Donald Trump after both unconstitutional impeachments and has never voted with Republicans in places other than where his vote didn’t count anyway, Manchin gives the impression of being the sensible Democrat “adult in the room” during the reign of Joe Biden, a time when the Democratic Party has been more outwardly leftist than at any point in recent memory.
To his credit, during Biden’s tenure Manchin has taken a strong stand against eliminating the Senate filibuster, which would have allowed Schumer and the rest of the Democratic caucus to ram through whatever legislation it wanted. Last year Manchin also stood against Biden’s original plan of legislation, Build Back Better, which would have added trillions to the national debt, pushed green energy and expanded Obamacare, among many other items from a leftist wish list.
Manchin and Schumer’s deal, however, paved the way for the Inflation Reduction Act, which in essence is the equivalent of Build Back Better in that it raises taxes, pushes green energy, and expands Obamacare. In addition, it doubles the size of the IRS by adding 87,000 new agents, just to rub salt in the wound of the higher taxes most of us will have to pay. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, only 4-9 percent of tax revenue will come from those making over $500,000, despite the Democrats’ promises to make the millionaires and billionaires pay their share.
How refreshing to see that the “party of the little guy” has no qualms about stealing more of our money while inflating prices for everything we need, all while leaning into policies that caused those prices to rise to begin with.
Interestingly, the one thing the Inflation Reduction Act does not do is actually reduce inflation. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, “the Act would very slightly increase inflation until 2024 and decrease inflation thereafter. These point estimates are statistically indistinguishable from zero, thereby indicating low confidence that the legislation will have any impact on inflation.”
Even more astonishingly, when an amendment was introduced to ensure that none of the new IRS funding could be used to audit taxpayers with taxable incomes under $400,000, Manchin joined his fellow Democrats to make the vote unanimous against it.
The “party of the little guy,” indeed.
To add insult to injury, Manchin tweeted earlier this month that “households earning $400,000 per year or less & small businesses will NOT see an increase in the chances that they are audited by the IRS because of the Inflation Reduction Act. I will NOT allow the IRS to harass taxpaying West Virginians or WV small businesses.”
Putting aside the blatant lie that taxes will not increase and that Manchin’s deal includes doubling the size of the IRS to enforce its tax increases, no one senator has the power to stop the IRS from doing what it now legally, thanks to Manchin, has the power to do.
Word on the street is that Democrats will possibly break the deal they made with Manchin. So what he got for his treachery is that he is now hated by all sides. Maybe Manchin shouldn’t have trusted Democrats either.