Manchin Believes Parents Would Use Child Tax Credits to Buy Drugs

The more I read about West Virginia's allegedly Democratic Senator the less I like Joe Manchin:

Publicly, his biggest gripes are about the cost of the bill. But privately, Manchin has told his colleagues that he essentially doesn’t trust low-income people to spend government money wisely.

In recent months, Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, according to two sources familiar with the senator’s comments. Continuing the child tax credit for another year is a core part of the Build Back Better legislation that Democrats had hoped to pass by the end of the year. The policy has already cut child poverty by nearly 30%. 

Manchin’s private comments shocked several senators, who saw it as an unfair assault on his own constituents and those struggling to raise children in poverty. Manchin has also told colleagues he believes that Americans would fraudulently use the proposed paid sick leave policy, specifically saying people would feign being sick and go on hunting trips, a source familiar with his comments told HuffPost.

Frankly, I'd like to see some evidence to support his argument. His statement is about as baseless as Donald Trump's repeated claims that he won the 2020 election.

Then again Manchin strikes me as a sort of guy who would call Mexicans criminals, drug dealers and rapists. And as shocking as Donald Trump's comments were in 2015 those remarks got him elected President. So no doubt Manchin says this knowing a good many of his constituents in West Virginia agree with him.

But Manchin's comments say a great deal more about him than it does about his constituents in West Virginia whom he clearly holds in utter contempt and for that most of the parents trying to raise children in poverty in this country. 

Having seen It's a Wonderful Life yesterday afternoon, I cannot help but think of Joe Biden as George Bailey to Joe Manchin's Mr. Potter. Manchin can enjoy his yacht but Biden will die a much richer man than he will ever be.