A far-left activist group aligned with Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) is pushing to eliminate the U.S. Senate in an effort to ram through Democrat President Joe Biden’s partisan $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), one of the only non-far-left senators in the Senate, warned in an op-ed Thursday that inflation was a serious threat to the U.S. and that he could not support Biden’s gigantic bill.
Manchin wrote that some of his colleagues have a “strange belief” that “there is an infinite supply of money to deal with any current or future crisis, and that spending trillions upon trillions will have no negative consequence for the future.”
“I disagree,” Manchin wrote, as he then proceeded to note that “an overheating economy has imposed a costly ‘inflation tax’ on every middle- and working-class American.”
Manchin slammed his own part for not taking into account rising inflation as they attempted to pass “the largest single spending bill in history” which he said would “create a disastrous future for the next generation of Americans.”
Manchin called for the push to ram through Biden’s partisan agenda to be immediately halted, saying that people needed to watch inflation to see if it was “transitory” like the Biden administration claims it is.
Manchin continued:
While some have suggested this reconciliation legislation must be passed now, I believe that making budgetary decisions under artificial political deadlines never leads to good policy or sound decisions. I have always said if I can’t explain it, I can’t vote for it, and I can’t explain why my Democratic colleagues are rushing to spend $3.5 trillion. Another reason to pause: We must allow for a complete reporting and analysis of the implications a multitrillion-dollar bill will have for this generation and the next. Such a strategic pause will allow every member of Congress to use the transparent committee process to debate: What should we fund, and what can we simply not afford?
I, for one, won’t support a $3.5 trillion bill, or anywhere near that level of additional spending, without greater clarity about why Congress chooses to ignore the serious effects inflation and debt have on existing government programs. This is even more important now as the Social Security and Medicare Trustees have sounded the alarm that these life-saving programs will be insolvent and benefits could start to be reduced as soon as 2026 for Medicare and 2033, a year earlier than previously projected, for Social Security. Establishing an artificial $3.5 trillion spending number and then reverse-engineering the partisan social priorities that should be funded isn’t how you make good policy.
In response to Manchin’s well thought out response to hyper-partisanship in Washington, D.C., the Sunrise Movement, a far-left group aligned with AOC, demanded that the Senate be abolished, writing simply in a statement, “Abolish the Senate.”
AOC has repeatedly called for abolishing the filibuster and other important entities that protect the U.S., like the Department of Homeland Security, which was created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
🚨🚨🚨@AOC-aligned progressive group comes out for abolishing the entire Senate https://t.co/6yeouNfdAY
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) September 2, 2021
AOC later lashed out at Manchin online, suggesting that Manchin was responsible for “killing people.”
“Fossil fuel corps & dark money is destroying our democracy, country, & planet,” she claimed. “All day our community has been pulling bodies out of homes from the flood. Entire families. And we’re supposed to entertain lobbyist talking points about why we should abandon people & do nothing? No.”
Fossil fuel corps & dark money is destroying our democracy, country, & planet.
All day our community has been pulling bodies out of homes from the flood. Entire families. And we’re supposed to entertain lobbyist talking points about why we should abandon people & do nothing? No.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 2, 2021
This report has been corrected to reflect that the $3.5 trillion bill is the reconciliation bill, not the infrastructure bill.