Joe Manchin Was Right

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, January 12, 2022

 

Senator Manchin was correct about inflation and its attendant risks. Senator Manchin’s many critics were wrong about inflation and its attendant risks. The United States is fortunate that Senator Manchin has withstood the considerable pressure to acquiesce to a lie, and steadfastly held his ground.

 

Today’s numbers are utterly disastrous. Per CNBC, “Inflation plowed ahead at its fastest 12-month pace in nearly 40 years during December, according to a closely watched gauge the Labor Department released Wednesday.” “The consumer price index,” the outlet documented, “increased 7%.”

 

This is the fastest increase since 1982.

 

The last year has been the tale of two Joes. There has been Joe Biden, whose core position on inflation has been that it wouldn’t dare interfere with his presidency. In July, Biden insisted that “there’s nobody suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way — no serious economist — that’s totally different.” In December, when inflation could no longer be denied, Biden alternated between insisting that inflation was about to go away and pretending that his plan to spend another $3.5 trillion would somehow prevent it from getting worse. Today, the White House is sounding equally schizophrenic. Inflation is peaking, says Jen Psaki, confidently. Oh, and also, it’s not real.

 

And then there has been Joe Manchin, who has not only seen inflation coming, but has clearly articulated the link between its pending arrival and our excessive government spending. In September of last year, Manchin explained that he wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of adding trillions more in spending to the World War II–sized figure that the federal government has approved since March of 2020, given the risks that such spending would pose. “Suggesting that spending trillions more will not have an impact on inflation,” he wrote, “ignores the everyday reality that America’s families continue to pay an unavoidable inflation tax.” In November, Manchin was even clearer. “I, for one,” he vowed, “won’t support a multitrillion-dollar bill without greater clarity about why Congress chooses to ignore the serious effects inflation and debt have on our economy and existing government programs.” “Elected leaders,” Manchin concluded, “continue to ignore exploding inflation, that our national debt continues to grow, and interest payments on the debt will start to rapidly increase when the FED has to start raising interest rates to try to slow down runaway inflation.”

 

Joe Manchin was right.

 

President Biden was wrong. And, astonishingly enough, his approach is only growing worse. Yesterday, Roll Call confirmed that, in addition to its demand for $3.5 trillion for “Build Back Better,” “the Biden administration is preparing to ask Congress for ‘substantial’ funding to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic domestically and abroad.” Quoting Steny Hoyer, the journal recorded that the president “will ask lawmakers to appropriate funding for testing, vaccines and ‘to make sure schools have resources to keep themselves safe.’”

 

The obvious question here is Why? As of today, the federal government has spent $5.6 trillion on Covid relief, $2 trillion of which was passed by the Democrats in March. There is plenty of money swilling around for “testing” and “vaccines.” And schools? Well, is the president kidding? As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes has noted, “Last spring Congress distributed $123 billion dollars to K-12 schools for Covid preparedness” — “nearly $1 million per school.” And now they want more? Why?

 

The contrast between Biden and Manchin has been stark. Since he took office last January, Biden has constructed a fantasy world for himself — a world in which he enjoys FDR-sized majorities in Congress; in which the mere fact of his being in the Oval Office would cause the virus to disappear; in which he was elected to transform the country rather than to be a caretaker; in which Twitter reflects real life rather than an extreme subset of the population; and in which inconveniences such as unemployment, supply-chain limitations, and inflation can be banished with rhetoric from the White House podium.

 

Manchin, meanwhile, has kept his feet firmly on the ground — respecting basic economic reality, remembering that he is from West Virginia rather than Washington, D.C., recognizing that the country did not accord the Democrats a mandate for revolution, recalling that Democrats are capable of losing elections as well as winning them, and apprehending that his job requires him to think in the long term as well as in the short.

 

The results are speaking for themselves.