AOC tears into Joe Manchin for 'suggesting Americans would spend their child tax credits on drugs'

‘Squad’ member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted Sen. Joe Manchin in a Thursday night tweet, accusing the centrist Democrat of blowing up his party’s huge spending plans and condemning millions of children to poverty based on rumors that parents would spend tax credits on drugs.

She leveled her accusation after new data showed the monthly child poverty rate skyrocketed at the start of the year after President Biden’s expanded child tax benefits ended.   

‘One US Senator “heard stories” about people allegedly using the Child Tax Credit “for drugs” without any evidence or data to back it up,’ tweeted Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. 

‘He then used that as justification to nuke the entire national program, causing millions of kids to fall into poverty in weeks. Horrifying.’

She did not name Manchin. She did not need to.  

The conservative Democrat made clear he could not support child tax credits as part of the $2 trillion Build Back Better proposal, unless it included a work requirement for parents.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched a thinly veiled attack on conservative Democrat Joe Manchin, describing how a senator blew up the party’s social welfare agenda after he ‘”heard stories” about people allegedly using the Child Tax Credit “for drugs” without any evidence’

She delivered her attack after a Columbia study found a rapid increase in child poverty after expanded child tax credits ended in December 2021

Privately he reportedly told allies that low-income parents could not be trusted to spend the money properly.

He told several Democrats that he believed they would waste the monthly payments on drugs, according to Huffington Post. 

And he said that paid family leave provisions would be used for people to go on deer hunting trips.

After that report surfaced, his office said Manchin opposed the Build Back Better agenda largely because of its cost. 

As a result, Biden’s expanded credits – part of the pandemic relief effort – lapsed at the end of last year.

On Thursday, the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University laid out the impact.

It said the child poverty rate rose from 12 percent in December 2021 to 17 percent last month – an increase of about 41 percent . 

AOC also blasted the media for failing to tell the human story of child poverty and the impact of political wrangling by ‘some guy in a yacht’

That meant an extra 3.7 million children were now living in poverty, with black and Latino children seeing the biggest increases.

The study concluded that that child poverty is now at its highest since the end of 2020. 

AOC concluded by attacking the media for failing to tell the human story behind the Washington wrangling over Biden’s spending plans. 

‘Meanwhile the press talks about it like it’s some beltway drama without ever showing the people who are sleeping in bubble jackets with no heat or the kids going hungry waiting for some guy in a yacht to decide if they are fully human or not,’ she wrote. 

‘It’s just shameful, all of it.’ 

Manchin’s Washington DC residence is a houseboat. 

The credits meant parents received payments worth up to $250 per child from age 6 to 17 and $300 per child under 6 each month from July to December last year.

The Columbia study said some 61 children in more than 36 million were helped.