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Monday, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg responded to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) maintaining that President Joe Biden’s so-called “Build Back Better” agenda was dead. Buttigieg told CNN’s “At This Hour” that the Biden administration can still do something “big” for the American people, although it would likely have a different name or vehicle.

With Democrats' multitrillion dollar Build Back Better initiative hitting a wall in the U.S. Senate, resident Joe Biden has suggested that components of the bill be advanced separately. One of these components is a plan for government funded universal pre-K schooling. It would fund school for some 6 million children ages 3 and 4. Federal funds would be provided for six years, the first three funded 100% by the federal government, with the share provided by states increasing up to 40% by year six. Total cost estimate generated by the bill's sponsors is $200 billion. But like the entire Build...

Sen. Joe Manchin's announcement that he will not support the Democrats' giant spending bill should not have been a surprise to anyone who has been watching Manchin for the last few months. Yet many Democrats, especially in the White House and in the progressive wing of the House of Representatives, appeared shocked when Manchin told Fox News' Bret Baier, "I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can't." They apparently believed Manchin would ultimately come around, and do so before Christmas. When he did not, they were stunned. Their reaction is the latest manifestation of a...

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., blasted the White House "staff" for leaking "absolutely inexcusable" things about him after rejecting President Biden’s Build Back Better Act during an interview on "Fox News Sunday." He said he would not be pressured into supporting the bill by his fellow Democrats Manchin said during a Monday interview with MetroNews Talkline that the White House "retaliated" against him after he told "Fox News Sunday" that he could not support Biden's signature COVID–19 relief legislation. "Basically, they retaliated," the West Virginia Democrat said. "I figured they would come back strong."

Two elected officials—from different parts of America—emerged this weekend as the kind of patriots which are in too short supply these days…but both offered a ray of hope for our future.First, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia just earned the thanks of every right-thinking man, woman, and child in America. Because on Sunday, Manchin essentially killed the ridiculous, bloated and unnecessary $2-trillion grab-bag of ultraLeftist spending scams called Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan.(By the way, like so much of Biden’s past career…he plagiarized the “Build Back Better” terminology from British prime minister Boris Johnson…who early in 2020 unveiled a...

Arizona faith leaders are urging U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema to expand child tax credits as part of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. If the credits aren’t at least extended by the end of December, the recurring monthly payments of up to $300 for every child under the age of six and $250 a month for children ages 6-17 would lapse in the new year. As passed by the House last month, the Build Back Better bill includes a one-year extension of the child tax credit. Tamera Zivic, the CEO of WHEAT, an anti-hunger and poverty...

resident Joe Biden and Capitol Hill Democrats are racing to pass their massive social spending bill, known as Build Back Better, before Christmas. Maybe they'll succeed, and maybe they won't -- a lot depends on whether Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin hops on board. But no one should have any illusions about what BBB, the final piece in the Democrats' COVID-year spending orgy, costs. After a lot of deceptive claims from Democrats, we finally have an answer. Biden has claimed, falsely, that the bill is "fully paid for." But last month, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis saying BBB would...

Should we ignore the costs of the "Build Back Better" bill and simply focus on the benefits? Wouldn't that be nice? Unfortunately, the most constructive criticisms of the legislation reveal why the magical thinking behind this monstrously expensive spending package will not improve American society. In urging us to focus less on costs, economist Alan Blinder asserts: "The House bill includes several real winners. Do you oppose universal pre-K education? You shouldn't; it works. Are you against more-affordable child care? Not many Americans are. Do you think we should ignore global climate change? If so, think again." But these assertions...

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is planning to bring President Biden's social and climate spending bill to the floor as soon as the week of Dec. 13, a source familiar confirmed to The Hill. Schumer's plan is to bring the bill, known as Build Back Better, to the Senate floor once Democrats finish their conversations with the parliamentarian, who provides guidance on what can be included in a bill passed through budget reconciliation. "As soon as the necessary technical and procedural work with the Senate parliamentarian has been completed... the Senate will take up this legislation," Schumer told reporters...

No president has ever proposed a more egregiously misnamed piece of legislation than resident Joe Biden's so-called Build Back Better plan. The label "Progressive-Democrats" chose for this European-style socialist legislation is an example of their favorite ploy: semantic subterfuge -- assigning an appealing name to an appalling concept. n reality, the plan is a socialist wealth redistribution ploy to erode America's free market economy and replace it with government control, burdensome regulations and even higher taxes. When it comes to building back better, what Biden and the Democrats need to rebuild are the successful policies of the previous administration they...

The Biden administration is scrambling to come up with ways to pay for its trillions of dollars of social program proposals. One such way they’ve proposed to do this is to give the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) more funding to go after potential tax cheats. Proponents say more money for the IRS will pay for itself by allowing the agency to go after millionaires and billionaires who are underpaying on their federal tax returns. However, if the IRS’s past track record is any indication, it will not be the rich and powerful that come under their microscope. Before ProPublica resorted...

Remember when Joe Biden ran for president in what commentators called the "centrist" lane of the Democratic primaries? The idea was that a "moderate" like Biden, unlike rival Bernie Sanders, would not push radical plans to completely change American society. That would reassure non-progressive Democrats, and independents, too, that Biden would be a safe choice for president. They didn't want to remake the world. They just wanted things to get better. You could see the difference in the Democratic debates. To take one example, at a debate in November 2019, Sanders urged people to join him "if you want to...

"Drain the swamp!" Those three words were more than a mantra for the Trump administration. They were shorthand for reducing the number of nameless, faceless bureaucrats who control the lives of Americans by enforcing a plethora of government regulations without ever standing for election. Now, with resident Joe Biden in the White House, the swamp is again overflowing. OpentheBooks.com recently published the latest appalling figures on the federal government's "internal" spending. One example: The Biden White House is the most costly in our nation's history, even though the president has been in office less than a year. His White House...

Lost in the nationwide grieving by the mainstream media over the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges stemming from defending himself against violent rioters last summer in Kenosha, Wisconsin was the U.S. House’s passage Friday of the most massive consumer fraud since Bernie Madoff gave creative accounting advice to crooks at Enron.I’m referring, of course, to the fraudulently-named “Build Back Better” bill …which should more accurately be described as the “Biden-Harris-Pelosi Blueprint for Bankrupting America while Encouraging N’er-do Wells to Sit At Home Drinking Colt .45 Malt Liquor and Watching Netflix while Attaching Themselves like Barnacles to Hard Working...

It is no secret that the costs of prescription drugs are very high in the United States. Studies from Harvard Medical School indicate that one in four American patients have foregone a prescription because the cost was too high. With the costs of everything else beginning to rise due to the pandemic, inflation, and the global supply chain crisis, it is even more possible that more Americans will have to choose between treating their illnesses and affording basic necessities. This is unacceptable. Access to medicine and prescriptions is a problem that touches many families in the United States. Naturally, lawmakers...

As Democrats regroup to try to pass their $2 trillion Build Back Better Act, pressure grows for shining the light of fiscal responsibility on all this. Given resident Joe Biden's crashing approval ratings, there is some hint that the American people smell a rat. One sign of the smell of that rat is the alarming escalation of the rate of inflation to where it hasn't been in over 30 years. Let's start with the announcement from the Treasury Department a week ago that the revenue measures built in to finance the $2 trillion in spending will not only not add...

Democrats are quarreling over the price tag of their Build Back Better bill, but the real problem is what's in it. The bill coerces workers to join unions, imposes racial preferences on every facet of life and redistributes money from workers to takers. Fortunately, this bill is in limbo. Moderate Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin insist the bill has to be pared down to less than half its current price tag. The far left is screaming in outrage. But the bill can't pass without every Senate Democrat supporting it. Not passing it would be the best outcome. This bill...

This week, resident Joe Biden made the incredible statement -- sycophantically repeated by the press -- that his $3.5 trillion budget bill, which includes major spending initiatives on everything from climate change to Medicare, would be "free." Biden tweeted, "My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars. Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America." This asinine notion immediately rocketed around the political sphere. White House press secretary Jen Psaki explained, "The reconciliation package will cost zero dollars." Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.,...

If resident Biden sees electric vehicles in everyone’s future, he ironically will have to rely on copper mines to get there. Consider the current bipartisan infrastructure package, a $1.2 trillion mishmash of boondoggles and eco-centric priorities ostensibly designed to alleviate the “climate crisis,” while simultaneously starting another crisis, by putting hundreds of thousands of current American energy jobs at risk. The president’s “Build Back Better” plan is a brilliant one, if you want lower-paying solar and wind jobs to replace high-paying oil and gas ones, or if you want Chinese-owned companies to prosper while American manufacturers are priced out of...

A seemingly effective way for politicians to justify our need for their services is to fabricate or exaggerate a problem, promise to fix said problem with a new program or lots of spending and then claim victory in the form of public acclaim and reelection. A good example of this behavior is President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan, which reflects a tweet by then-candidate Biden that he does "not buy for one second that the vitality of American manufacturing is a thing of the past." His plan asks for $400 billion to purchase American-made equipment, along with $300 billion...