By John F. Di Leo -
Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are known as the moderates of the Senate Democratic Caucus.
There are problems with that designation, of course, such as the fact that Manchin's and Sinema's lifetime ACU ratings are 27% and 15%, respectively – not exactly the definition of "moderation."
But the universe of Democratic Party officeholders has moved so far left that they now officially regard Josef Stalin as "squishy," so the definition of "moderate" has had to be softened a bit as well, in recent years.
Since the Democrats usurped complete control of both the national executive and legislative branches in 2020, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have become the official powerbrokers in Washington, able to keep tantalizing the Republican caucus with the possibility of stopping bad bills, and ensuring that their own Democrat caucus gives them whatever they want when they, ultimately, "give in."
But just exactly what DO Manchin and Sinema want? They claim to want moderation; they claim to want fiscal responsibility. But they still end up voting for bills that are anything but moderate, bills that are anything but responsible.
Look, for example, at this latest monstrosity, the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, a name that should come with its own laugh track.
The bill would spend well over $400 billion we don't have, while collecting at least $650 billion more in taxes from a private sector already struggling to stay afloat.
The Left will say "oh, but these are things we need, so it's all right," because their cult-like devotion to the religion of Global Warming (or Climate Change, or whatever they feel like calling it this week) frees them from any obligation to pay attention to mathematics, human nature, their voters' well-being, or in fact, the real world.
Consider:
At a time when Red China has raised saber-rattling to an art form, claiming the entire South China Sea as its inland lake and daily threatening to start a war with our important trading partner and friend, Taiwan, R.O.C., this bill paves the way for about a half trillion in direct spending and in loan guarantees for electric vehicles and other green energy projects that depend on massive importation of materials available only from China, the belligerent and therefore a likely banned source once the time comes.
Even if we dodge the China-Taiwan war that appears to be in the offing, this is a time of severe supply chain disruption from that area of the world. This bill sets up an expectation for tens of billions of dollars in imports that are already one to three years on backorder. Artificially increasing the demand for these goods will push that existing manufacturing backlog out even further, jeopardizing the ongoing American businesses already suffering from shortages of millions of desperately needed Asian materials and components.
Among the specifics in this bill are several separate loan guarantee programs, such as $40 billion for projects that purport to reduce greenhouse gases (which to them basically means carbon dioxide). What's their past history on this sort of thing? Well, in the original "stimulus" package of the Obama-Biden regime, the ARRA of a dozen years ago, they dealt out hundreds of billions of dollars for such projects, only to see the companies go up in smoke, every penny of federal money along with it. Nothing has changed in the last decade to indicate that the result will differ at all this time.
Perhaps most telling, this bill pours tens of billions of dollars into direct federal hiring of bureaucrats whose very job will be to spread disinformation – it employs "climate lobbyists," "climate justice crusaders," and "climate educators," who will spread the gospel of carbon dioxide demonization throughout the country and even throughout the world.
Together, natural gas and coal produce almost 50% of Arizona's energy; while natural gas, coal and oil produce over 90% of West Virginia's. And yet, West Virginia's Senator Manchin and Arizona's Senator Sinema voted for this act, which will flood the government with apparatchiks who will condemn their states' energy production and who will do their level best to shut it down.
What did they get in return?
Well, reportedly, Sinema got some of the original plan's more horrific tax changes removed from the bill, such as the carried interest technique, and she managed to get a little drought relief funding for Arizona. And similarly, Manchin allegedly got a promise from the powers that be that West Virginia will soon get approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural gas delivery program that his fellow leftists have been fighting for years.
Let's think about this. In order to get these relatively minor benefits for certain elements of their respective constituencies, these two senators voted for a bill that takes direct aim at their entire states, in numerous ways.
This is like an alderman getting a reduction in the annual fee for the liquor licenses needed by the bars and restaurants in his ward, while agreeing to a complete prohibition of alcohol in five years' time. Or like getting a tax credit for the price of blacksmith services and horseshoe replacement, while agreeing to utterly ban all horses from the jurisdiction. Or like winning a tax credit for language lessons in German and Italian, while forbidding the use of either language in either speech or writing.
The most commonly used term for such choices is "schizophrenic…" but that's not quite right. It implies a form of mental illness on the part of these senators. But are they really crazy?
These senators know how bad this bill is for their states; they know how bad it is for the entire country as well. In fact, they have both attacked the bill, in various ways, for over a year. They didn't have to cave at all.
Senators Sinema and Manchin agreed to support it, in the end, because they wanted to. That's the only explanation. They weren't rolled… they just wanted enough plausible deniability built in so that when it's all a disaster, they can claim that they were rolled.
Everyone who voted for this bill supports this bill – by definition. They support what it stands for, what it includes, what it will fund, who it will rob, and who it will bankrupt. They support all the destruction that this bill will do… or they wouldn't have voted for it.
All that Manchin and Sinema needed to do was to chalk up a few alleged small wins for their states – however minor by comparison, however cancelled out by other aspects of the bill – so that they could proudly tell their constituents that it was going to pass anyway, so they got something for their states, anyway. That's how this game has been played in Washington for a century.
But even that is a lie… because a single No vote would have stopped the bill. Kamala Harris could only step in to cast that tie-breaking vote if it was in fact a tie; any one member of the Senate Democrat Caucus had the power to stop it, and every single one chose not to.
We can only hope that the public is beginning to see through this massive con, and will hold all fifty of these self-dealing cretins responsible, the next time their names show up on a ballot.
May Divine Providence grant the voters a longer memory than they have sometimes shown in the past.
Copyright 2022 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer and transportation manager, writer, and actor. A one-time county chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, he has been writing regularly for Illinois Review since 2009.
A collection of John’s Illinois Review articles about vote fraud, The Tales of Little Pavel, and his 2021 political satires about current events, Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes One and Two, are available, in either paperback or eBook, only on Amazon.
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