Biden takes a shot at Manchin for claiming Build Back Better is ‘all about social spending’ and says he misses being a professor at Penn University – even though he didn’t teach any classes – in interview for Substack
- Biden gave an aside about ‘one senator from West Virginia’ during an interview
- He said the senator [Manchin] talks about how is plan is ‘all social spending’
- He pointed to $500 billion in climate programs and the expanded child tax credit
- He pitched elements of his stalled plan in his State of the Union Address
- Also mentioned how redecorating the Oval Office was easier because ‘the other president didn’t even show up for the inauguration’
President Joe Biden took a dig at West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin in a new interview – pointing to the stalled Build Back Better plan’s $500 billion in climate programs despite Manchin’s gripes.
Biden made the comment to with historian Heather Cox Richardson, speaking in front of a crackling fire in the China Room of the White House, when he brought up Manchin while defending his $1.8 trillion plan, which died at the end of 2021 with little movement since.
He pitched individual programs in his State of the Union, and rolled out a new ‘Building America Better’ rebrand on a trip to Wisconsin this week.
‘The Build Back Better piece. What people don’t realize, mainly because one senator from West Virginia talks about how it’s all social spending – well, you know, all the money in Build Back Better provisions, there is about $500 billion of it is for the environment,’ he said in the Substack interview.
President Joe Biden took a dig at Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) in a new interview
‘Five hundred billion is for the environment. But the other parts are for the best way to deal with people who have been getting the short end of the stick, as they say, for a long time,’ Biden told the Boston College historian.
His comment came amid more Democratic grumbling about Manchin, who has blasted temporary programs in the package, and challenged colleagues to choose a single program to extend for 10 years. He has focused on inflation, and called for the country to ‘get its fiscal house in order,’ while progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are pushing to create programs to free child care, eldercare, and other programs.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., sat with Republicans during Biden’s State of the Union speech, and has focused on inflation
Biden sat for an interview with Dr. Heather Cox Richardson
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., stands and applauds as he sits among Republican Senators as President Joe Biden delivers his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, at the Capitol on March 01, 2022 in Washington, DC
Manchin called inflation the ‘the Number One enemy,’ and his opposition helped kill the plan late last year.
‘If you want to reduce the burden of people who are struggling to pay for a gallon of has … there’s other ways to increase their overall standard of living,’ Biden continued, pointing to an expansion of the child tax credit in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan enacted in his first year. The BBB plan had another expansion.
‘Well that reduced child poverty by 40 per cent. well it wasn’t a welfare program, it was a tax cut,’ said Biden.
He also had a dig for former President Trump, when describing decisions on which historic figures got placed in the Oval Office during a brief window of time on Jan. 20th.
‘It was easier because the other president didn’t even show up for the inauguration or anything,’ Biden said.
He said in another comment to Richardson – who prefaced questions with long historical propositions – ‘You make me miss being a professor at Penn … I really enjoyed teaching and writing.’
In fact Biden had an honorary professor position and gave some lectures at the Penn Biden Center, but didn’t teach a class, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian.
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