At the end of his year of Old Testament afflictions ¡ª the political equivalent of Job losing his camels and acquiring boils ¡ª President Joe Biden might be muttering: Job was at least spared Joe Manchin III and Kyrsten Sinema, two senators from his party. These Democrats, however, stand between him and the potentially worst of his self-inflicted wounds, the Build Back Better (BBB) bill.
It is a sow¡¯s ear made from the silk purse of his election, which was the nation¡¯s plea for temperateness. The everything-including-the-kitchen-sink process that has produced BBB has completed the collapse of Biden¡¯s credibility, and his party¡¯s. The process has resembled Winston Churchill¡¯s description of an intragovernmental negotiation: Britain¡¯s Admiralty favored building six battleships and the economists favored four, so they compromised on eight.
BBB treats all Democratic constituencies like baby birds with their beaks wide open. Including journalists: There is a $1.7 billion payroll tax credit of up to $25,000 for each local journalist an organization employs in the first year and $15,000 for the next four ¡ª with the usual make-believe that this dependency of media on government will then end. The media will always proclaim their independence, but progressives¡¯ politics is always about multiplying dependent constituencies.
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