Democrats Break Their Word, Manchin Does ‘Olympic-worthy’ Flip Flop

This week I discussed Sen. Joe Manchin’s flip-flop on Senate Democrats’ reckless spending bill and Leader Schumer’s back-room negotiations kept from members of his own party in a brazen act of bad faith. Excerpts of my remarks are below, and video can be found here. 

Senator Manchin, the Senator from West Virginia, made a decision that angered most of his Democratic colleagues: he slammed the door on the climate and tax provisions in reconciliation.

After we received assurances privately from some Senate Democrats, including the staff of the Senate Majority Leader, that the tax and climate provisions were off the table, we were able to move forward with USICA and funding of this vulnerable semiconductor supply chain.

So Republicans and Democrats went to work negotiating in good faith to reach an agreement.

The climate and tax provisions apparently were never off the table, despite what we had been told. Apparently Democrats, specifically the Majority Leader and Senator Manchin, just moved those discussions out of the public eye into a secret back room.

After saying repeatedly he would not support such reckless policies, he's done an Olympic-worthy flip-flop, and there's simply no denying it.

Now Senator Manchin not only supports the ‘Build Back Broke’ bill, he now said it’s his proposal. He, in effect, wrote it, and it includes the same policies that he previously opposed: tax hikes on working families and small businesses, Green New Deal climate policies, socialist price controls on prescription drugs.

They're calling it the Inflation Reduction Act. What an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Do they think anybody will be fooled?

There are only 100 of us, and the relationships and the confidence that we have that when somebody looks you in the eye and tells you something, that they're going to stick with it, is important to negotiating in good faith and building consensus that’s necessary to pass legislation… like our mental health and school safety bill recently.

That trust was eviscerated yesterday. Senators Manchin and Schumer did not draft this 725-page bill in the four hours between the passage of the CHIPS Act and Senator Manchin's press release. They've been working on this the entire time, when they told us it was off the table.

How can we negotiate in good faith, compromise where necessary, and get things done together after the Majority Leader and the Senator from West Virginia pull a stunt like this?

The Democratic Leader's crafting secret deals in back rooms. He's keeping members of his own political party in the dark, such that they have to apologize to people like me who have been willing to trust that what people say that their word is their bond.

To look you in the eye and tell you one thing and to do another is absolutely unforgivable.