Isn’t Joe Manchin a hoot? He doesn’t want to extend the child tax credit because it would go to “bad people” who would use it for drugs. Then, demonstrating his lack of logic, he want to extend it for 10 years instead of one. Lot more drugs, Joe. (Studies show the money is overwhelmingly being used for essentials.)

Then he wants poor people to get jobs so they can earn that money. He says this off the cuff, of course, no research. No accounting for parents who are ill or disabled or have children with special needs or are caring for elderly parents.

Just bad people, the lot of them. We need to hold them accountable. “We don’t want to create an entitlement society,” he says. Okay, cut Medicare, cut Social Security, cut disability benefits for coal miners. (Oops! Skip that one.)

So who is keeping track of how senators like Manchin are handling taxpayer money: $3 million to 4 million to set up and run their offices; $48,00 to $68,000 for local offices; a $174,000 salary (in Manchin’s case, add $174,000 for his wife’s government job.)

Unlike poor people, he has spare change if he runs out of money: the half million dollars he gets each year from stock in his family’s coal company. Who’s entitled here? Guys in their 70s who haven’t changed a diaper or served their kids hot milk on bread for supper shouldn’t be making these decisions.

Donna Halvorsen
South Portland

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