Manchin demands Biden make Sophie’s choice to help American parents
Could you force a parent to choose between feeding your kids, paid time off from work, or childcare? To most people, that would be a monstrous dilemma to put before a parent — but that’s exactly what “Democratic” Senator Manchin is offering America.
A new report from Axios’ Hans Nichols reveals that Manchin wants to force President Biden and the Democrats who actually care about improving the lives of the American people to choose just one of the three signature policies that would be delivered in the heavily contested reconciliation bill that the oligarchy’s conservative lickspittles are intent on gutting.
“Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is telling colleagues that progressives need to pick just one of President Biden’s three signature policies for helping working families and discard the other two, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.”
Those policies — an expanded child tax credit, paid family leave, and subsidies for childcare — would be revolutionary for countless American familes, helping ease the burden of a rapidly rising cost of living and granting American workers a semblance of basic dignity back. Every single one of these programs would make dramatic improvements in the lives of millions of people.
But according to Manchin, this would create an “entitlement nation” where people are just given things by virtue of being human. The way he would tell it, this would rob people of the dignity of working long hours and never spending time with their kids. Instead, we would create a nation of handout-loving layabouts who don’t even want to answer emails on the weekend.
Of course, that’s a slice of disengenuous nonsense rooted firmly in the pernicious propaganda of Reaganism but is nevertheless accepted without question by the corporate news media. The reality is that Manchin and other conservatives know that once people’s lives improve, they’ll realize that it didn’t always have to be this way — and then they might start demanding MORE things that might require the wealthy to give up more of their ill-gotten, morally disgusting fortunes.
It is outrageous that the United States still is unwilling to provide its citizens with the basic social safety net that every other developed Western nation does. President Biden’s policy agenda represents the most ambitious assault on the tyranny of corporate worker exploitation and self-imposed social austerity we’ve seen in decades — which is why conservative sociopaths like Manchin are intent on tearing it to pieces.
Can’t let the American people taste what it might be like to live life without being overworked or overwhelmed with stress about money. They might like it.
