Joe Manchin votes with Pres. Biden 100% of the time

[Celerity]

73. Neera Tanden too.

White House pulls nomination of embattled budget chief pick Neera Tanden

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/white-house-pulls-nomination-embattled-budget-chief-pick-neera-tanden-n1258738

WASHINGTON — The White House is withdrawing Neera Tanden's nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget, marking the first major personnel defeat for President Joe Biden.

Tanden ran into trouble after Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., came out against her, citing overtly partisan statements that he said would have a toxic and detrimental impact on the working relationship between Congress and the influential budget office.

Also, the whingeing over Sanders above (the lowest Biden score in the Dem caucus! OMG OMG) is over TWO votes, and both passed anyway.

Yes, you read right, the difference between 100% and 'dead last' is 2 votes.

It was TWO votes total he voted against the Biden stance, and his opposition was meaningless to the outcome, as both passed anyway.

The 14 other Senators that had 97.1% had ONE vote where they voted against the Biden stances. You could say they all are second from dead last. Many voted No on Lloyd Austin to become Secretary of Defense, due to wanting to keep the top governmental control of the military completely in civilian hands and not an ex General. Sanders btw, voted Yes.

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=117&session=1&vote=00004#position



Here are the votes for Sanders:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-congress-votes/bernard-sanders/

One Sanders NO vote was nomination of Tom Vilsack to be secretary of agriculture, a nomination opposed by many different Democratic-affiliate groups, especially black farmers. It passed 92-7.

Black farmers, civil rights advocates seething over Vilsack pick

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/09/black-farmers-tom-vilsack-agriculture-usda-biden-cabinet-444077


The other No vote was against the Endless Frontier Act (it passed 68-32) because it contained a 10 billion dollar pay-out to Jeff Bezos that was added in very late as an amendment. He also wanted more oversight over the $53b spent on semi-conductors.


Bernie Sanders wants to stop NASA funding for Blue Origin

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/bernie-sanders-seeks-to-eliminate-the-bezos-bailout-in-space/

An earlier amendment, submitted by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), modified NASA's Artemis Program. Cantwell's amendment, in part, called for $10.03 billion in additional funding for NASA to carry out the Human Landing System program. This legislation was filed as Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos were urging Congress to add $10 billion to NASA's budget—enough money to fully fund the development of a second Human Landing System.

That posters are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill, and NOT for the first time, they tried the EXACT same thing back in July.

Again, Manchin is actually blocking things, plus he helped strip out over $2 TRILLION in new spending and tax incentives to fight global climate change from the bi-partisan infrastructure bill. An almost 80% reduction.


$2.05 trillion was already stripped out of Biden's proposal. The total new infrastructure spending in the bi-partisan bill is now only $550 billion (the other $650 billion is just renewal of old already-passed spending programmes under Trump and Moscow McTurtle).

The Infrastructure Plan: What’s In and What’s Out (it's brutal)

Biden's original plan:



What was left after they took a 2 trillion USD hatchet to it




They already chopped almost EIGHTY percent of actual new spending out of the hard infrastructure bill

and now Manchin wants to chop another almost 60 to 70% out of the even bigger bill, one that needs ZERO Rethugs votes to pass


The total new spending on Biden's original 2 bill proposals (hard and human) was $6.1 trillion.

IF Manchin and Sinema stick to their guns and chop out $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion of of the reconciliation bill, then you are looking at a total new spend for both bills of only $1.55 trillion to $2.05 trillion instead of $6.1 trillion.

That is a truly massive 2/3rds to 3/4ers total reduction in new spending, and the vast majority will be from the parts the largest single Democratic caucus in the House (the 96 person-strong Progressive Caucus) all desperately wanted, especially things to address climate change and to help working class Americans. Pete DeFazio, the Chair of the House Transportation Committee has been very, very unhappy for ages about what the bi-partisan Senators did.

I can see many of the 96 members of the Progressive Caucus (far beyond just The Squad) going bonkers if Manchin and Sinema (as the major Dem players in the 2 guttings) succeed in stripping out 4 to 4.5 trillion USD between the 2 bills. It may put both bills at risk, and then all hell will break loose between the 2 sides (96 House progs versus Manchin and Sinema in the Senate, plus the 10 renegade conservadem Problems Solver types in the House).

There is a way, IF Pelosi can pare down the dissenting progs to say 10, 20, maybe even 30 and THEN enough frontline 'psuedo-moderate' Rethugs vote for the bi-partisan bill only, in order to pass it. There is a problem (of course there is, lol) with that as well, as the House Rethugs (plus the fuckstick Trump) are going full bore to try and threaten any and all House Rethugs who may vote for the bi-partisan bill:

GOP pressure to block bipartisan infrastructure bill builds in the House

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/07/politics/bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-republican-support/index.html

Speaker Pelosi is DEFFO trying to make 10,000 angels dance on the head of a pin. She is probably the only person on the planet (zero hyperbole) who can get both bills passed in the House.