Chattanooga Times Free Press

Sellout or statesman?

Joe Manchin charts a prominent path

James Rosen, a former Washington Bureau reporter for McClatchy Newspapers, received the award for top columnist from the Society of Professional Journalists. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

What more do the Democrats want from Joe Manchin?

The West Virginia senator has voted in favor of President Joe Biden’s policies more than 90% of the time. Among 52 key votes that help define a presidency, Manchin cast the decisive vote six times on important issues ranging from protecting voting rights to providing $1.9 trillion in COVID-19 relief. A fiscal conservative, he cast the critical vote to increase the federal debt limit and to approve a $3.5 trillion budget plan.

Recently, he signed off on expanding subsidies for President Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Health Care Act, making a record $370 billion investment in combatting climate change, implementing a minimum 15% corporate tax and allowing Medicare to negotiate less-expensive prescription drug prices for beneficiaries, a move fiercely opposed by Big Pharma.

So crucial was his role that influential news outlets dubbed the package he hammered out with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “the Manchin deal.”

All this from a senator who represents a poor Appalachian state still dependent on coal mining, a state that voted overwhelmingly for

Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections.

Remarkably, in a sign of the follow-the-leader politics that now dominate both parties, Manchin’s

90.4 % pro-Biden voting record on major issues places him dead last in presidential loyalty among all 50 Democratic senators.

Despite supporting Biden most of the time, it’s Manchin’s contrary stances that grab headlines and spark anger from more progressive Democratic lawmakers.

Most significantly, Manchin made it clear that he would single-handedly kill the centerpiece of Biden’s legislative agenda, the Build Back Better Act, after the House passed it in November. Manchin said he opposed the package because of its effect on inflation and its overall $2.2 trillion price tag.

So strong was Manchin’s opposition, it led Biden and Schumer to rename the bill, which upon its July 27 Senate introduction was called the Inflation Reduction Act. Most significantly for Manchin, its $443 billion price tag is one-fifth that of the House measure.

Months before the trimmed-back package was released, Manchin faced fury from some progressive lawmakers for blocking Biden’s much bigger BBB plan, as Schumer and other Washington insiders call it.

During Donald Trump’s four years in office, Manchin voted against Trump’s positions half the time on his most important issues. Here, too, he was dead last among Democratic senators — the lowest percentage of key votes opposing the Republican president.

Some pro-Trump votes were popular bipartisan measures such as pandemic aid, economic stimulus in response to coronavirus shutdowns and efforts to ease the opioid crisis.

But on other, more controversial issues, Manchin joined Republicans in passing legislation that narrowly overcame Democratic opposition. Reflecting his coal constituency, he helped block tougher restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. He helped defeat an aid bill for migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and helped pass a measure providing $5.7 billion for a border wall. He voted for William Barr and Jeff Sessions to become attorney general. He backed Republicans in a close-butfailed bid to end federal funding of abortions. He cast the only Democratic vote to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.

So far, Manchin has resisted outreach from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell to ditch the Democrats and switch parties, following the path of Democrat-turned-Republican luminaries such as Ronald Reagan, Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.

That prospect would give Republicans control of the Senate and increase Manchin’s clout. So, too, does the fear that a Trump acolyte could defeat him in two years.

In his 2012 race for his first full Senate term, after serving the last two years of Sen. Robert Byrd’s term following Byrd’s death, Manchin defeated his Republican opponent by a 24-point margin. Six years later, with Trump hugely popular in West Virginia, Manchin’s victory margin was sliced to barely 3 points.

Facing re-election in 2024, when Biden is vowing he’ll be back on the ballot and Trump is more than hinting at another run, Manchin will seek a third full Senate term.

Voters will decide then whether the man who was dead last in opposing Trump and dead last in supporting Biden has been a sellout or a statesman.

PERSPECTIVE

en-us

2022-08-14T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-14T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.timesfreepress.com/article/283412015480454

WEHCO Media