(RepublicanInformer.com)- Last Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin announced that they had reached an agreement on a significant tax and spending bill laughingly named “The Inflation Reduction Act.”
Coming just hours after the Senate passed the CHIPS+ Act that offers billions in subsidies to the US semiconductor industry, the announcement caught Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell by surprise.
McConnell had told Schumer that Republicans would not block the CHIPS+ Act provided the Democrats scrap their efforts to pass the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act.”
And 17 Republican Senators dutifully voted with their Democrat colleagues to pass the CHIPS+ Act based on these assurances, only to have Manchin and Schumer stab them in the back.
While Mitch McConnell has a reputation for being a savvy operator who knows how to work the Senate, from time to time he is more like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football.
Believing Chuck Schumer on anything is a rookie mistake.
McConnell’s other mistake was forgetting that Joe Manchin is a Democrat and Democrats can’t be trusted.
McConnell believed Manchin’s repeated claims that he would never approve a massive spending bill while inflation was so high.
But in the end, Manchin proved to be just as trustworthy as any other Democrat lawmaker.
The betrayal prompted Republican leadership to urge their House caucus to vote against the CHIPS+ Act to make up for McConnell’s blunder.
Alas, that attempt to scuttle the bill failed. Twenty-four House Republicans defied their leadership and voted in favor of the CHIPS+ Act, which passed the House 243 to 187.
As far as the “Inflation Reduction Act” goes, Republicans are thus far united in opposition, mostly because the spending bill will not “reduce” inflation in the least. Instead, it raises taxes on Americans while spending hundreds of billions of dollars on so-called “green energy” boondoggles.
If Republicans remain steadfast in their opposition, all fifty Democrat Senators will have to vote for the bill and rely on Vice President Harris to cast the tie-breaking vote.
With Joe Manchin falling in line with Schumer, all eyes now turn on Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema who has so far not said whether she supports the measure.
