Stop Asking Joe Manchin What Numbers He Likes. Start Asking Which Programs He Wants to Cut.

[Uncle Joe]

We recently chose to stop spending $300 million a day on whatever it was that we were doing in Afghanistan. We are still currently on track to spend more than $7 trillion on various military pursuits over the next decade. Some Democrats in Congress have proposed to spend less than half that over the same 10-year period—$3.5 trillion—on silly things like childcare and addressing the onrushing ecological meltdown that threatens human civilization as we know it. This has, predictably, been cast as Crazy Liberals Run Amok. Only investing in our own citizens and making it a little less miserable to live in America are considered to be adding to The National Debt. Spending on bullets and bombs and planes that don't work is a sacred rite of our civic religion, which is why the $700 billion defense-spending bills pass each year with basically zero scrutiny or fanfare. Where is that money coming from? Indeed, where is it going? Nobody much cares, particularly political reporters.

But it's a different ballgame when we talk about some significant social spending—which, by the way, is offset by changes to the tax code that lower the actual cost of the bill well below $3.5 trillion. By some estimates, like this one via the Washington Post, it would be offset by $2.9 trillion in new revenue, bringing the actual budgetary impact to $600 billion. (The Trump tax cuts had an impact of as much as $1.9 trillion.) That same Post report traces how a $3.5 trillion bill would actually fit fairly neatly into larger trends in spending relative to the expansion of the American economy, and represent a far smaller intervention in real terms than FDR's New Deal. Plus, there's evidence that investments in kids "generate generational returns that ultimately pay for themselves."

But all anyone seems to ask Senator Joe Manchin is whether he can support $3.5 trillion—or, indeed, $2 trillion. At what level will Joe Manchin, crowned co-monarch of the Senate by the peculiarities of our constitutional system, decree the number is acceptable? Isn't the real question which programs and policy proposals in the $3.5 trillion framework Joe Manchin wants to cut?

(snip)

Of course, we can't ignore how all this is enabled by the press. The same rigorous methods that reduced the sprawling infrastructure discussions to singular dollar figures has led us to a ridiculous place on raising the debt ceiling, a thing that is not optional if you are interested in maintaining the full faith and credit of the United States government and avoiding a financial meltdown. (Again: raising the debt limit does not authorize further spending that adds to the debt. We've already spent this money.) In today's newsletter for savvy people from Punchbowl News—presented by Chevron—it is treated as naturally inevitable that Republicans will put a gun to the head of the global economy. Discussions of carving out an exception to the Senate filibuster, a bit of made-up nonsense with no basis in the Constitution, are treated as the beginning of a slippery slope that ends with a carveout for bills protecting the right to vote.

(snip)


https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a37882065/joe-manchin-3-5-trillion-top-line/

[msongs]

1. ask him why he goes against the wishes of his jesus. ya know, feed the hungry etc nt

[Submariner]

2. Biden wants to expand Veterans aid for older veterans

but Manchin obviously had other priorities and never served, so he does not know how much Dick 5 deferment Cheney messed up the VA system back in 2002, to the detriment of non-combat injured veterans who lost all access. Joe's a free rider, so he knows zip about veterans needs.

[unblock]

3. ask him which bridges in West Virginia he wants to see crumble

ask him which bridges in West Virginia he wants to see crumble while cars full of West Virginians are driving on it.

[greymattermom]

4. Ask him whether West Virginia wants to turn down...

name any of the programs.

[Beastly Boy]

5. A very fitting and long overdue question to ask Manchin.

I hope someone does. In public, to his face, while the cameras are rolling.

[luv2fly]

7. Absolutely, it's not about money

MSM is all too happy to make it about dollars, but you're spot on when you say it's about services and programs. Services makes it real for people, numbers in the trillions make it abstract.