Manchin says he was very much in favor of extending the Child Tax Credit, with certain conditions. He wants a work requirement (like Bill and Hillary Clinton would), and he wants it more focused on lower-income earners.
He's a neoliberal POS, just like Bill and Hillary. Of course he would want a work requirement as it would create another way to shovel money to employers using employees as the conduit while making them think they actually gained something.
Manchin probably doesn’t believe in Modern Monetary Theory, or if he does, he knows that in order to keep inflation in check, we’d have to remove money from the economy from the people who have billions of it. I think he’s worried about the taxes we’d have to raise to keep inflation in check.
He believes in MMT, just as anyone in government for any time does, but he will take whatever position his donors want him to take, which is definitely not MMT's view of federal finance, even though it is functionally correct. If he is truly worried about MMT causing inflation, and not just posturing for effect, then he has little grasp on how his job impacts his government the economy and should be ousted for stupidity.
MMT is simply a correct view of how money is created and impacts the general economy. It supports tax cuts as well as spending, contrary to the common narrative. Billionaires don't actually contribute much to inflation because their money is mostly in Treasury bonds when deficit spending makes them available, which means it is no longer part of the money supply with velocity required to create inflation. When new bond issues are not created by deficit spending their money seeks other investments, which is what drives rent seeking and inflationary bubbles in commodities or private sector bonds/derivatives.
I think this is the real fear of the GOP: Democrats might actually enact another very popular law that would be very hard to repeal.
With conservatives and neoliberals firmly in control of the Democratic party this is not confined to the GOP. When Biden told the wealthy donor class that "nothing will fundamentally change" I'm pretty sure he didn't mean "except for things in the BBB". We can only hope Social Security doesn't become a topic of debate, or Biden is likely to follow the lead of Obama and volunteer for cuts to the program before a vote is even put to the floor. Thank God for the TEA party wanting much more or we would have seen those unnecessary cuts and tax increases.
