A blow to democracy
Although I have qualms about spending trillions more dollars to expand the social safety net at a time that the national debt is soaring and inflation is raging, there is a tragic component to West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin serving to single-handedly kill the president’s Build Back Better bill, which contains many features that are popular with wide swaths of the American people. Certainly his Democratic colleagues are particularly disgusted with him, given that initiatives desired by them were cut out or trimmed back in an effort to appease this one powerful senator.
I wonder if the residents of West Virginia, one of the most impoverished states, recognize how inordinately they would have benefitted from the legislation and whether they will be resentful that the help many of them seek has been denied to them by one of their own.
Unless a legislative miracle takes place, there will now be no government funding for universal preschool, child care subsidies, no expanded in-home care for those who are seriously ill or infirm, no extension of the child tax credit.
The overarching danger is that the inability to pass the administration’s signature agenda item will enable those on the opposite side of the aisle to charge with some success that the president has failed. That could serve to return control of at least one branch of Congress in 2022 and perhaps the presidency in 2024 to the party which refuses to acknowledge the Biden victory. That would be a crushing blow with the potential to end our democracy, something which no patriot should endorse.
Oren Spiegler
Peters Township聽