As Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) threatens to block President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion budget bill, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) ripped Manchin a new one for being a “fiscally irresponsible” corporate pawn.

Despite having control of the Senate, Democrats have been held back by Manchin time and time again from passing major legislative goals, most notably voting rights and raising the minimum wage. Indeed, Manchin is basically a Republican who is apparently hell-bent on sabotaging the Democratic majority.

Such is the case with the budget bill, which Manchin claims he is rejecting because it costs too much when the reality is that he just doesn’t like how it’s being paid for, which is by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

A big part of the bill Manchin wants to strip is funding for childcare services, which would help women in the workforce and improve the economy similar to programs in other developed countries.

On Thursday, Porter took aim at Manchin by defending the budget bill.

“Let me be clear. Women, parents, child care aren’t some special need, they’re a building block of our budget and of our economy and the exact same way that environmental standards are, the exact same way that dealing with clean energy investment, dealing with health care,” she said during an interview on MSNBC. “This needs to go in the same bill because it is about the same things.”

“With regard to Senator Manchin and others that want to talk about the price tag for this,” she continued. “Let me be clear, you’re a business person, you get it, you can do the math. If something costs ‘A,’ you have two options. You can negotiate down from ‘A’ or find the money. We have revenue options on the table. There are a huge number of corporations that pay zero taxes and by making savvy revenue choices, for example, using real corporate profit approach to dealing with those corporations that pay zero, we can generate $700 billion. If we use the corporate minimum tax approach, we generate $40 billion. right there. Right there, Senator Manchin.”

But Manchin pretty much works for corporations, which are major donors to his campaign. So any legislation that would bring in revenue from his owners to pay for desperately needed programs and infrastructure is unacceptable to him even though corporations are wealthy enough to pay their fair share and should be forced to do so for the public good.

“Anyone that’s worried about spending, we can generate revenue so it isn’t about $3.5 trillion in spending,” Porter said. “We will generate revenue to pay for things. I have the will to do it. The question is does Senator Manchin or is he more concerned about corporate donors, including the oil and gas industry, big pharmaceutical industry, and others getting away with paying nothing under the current tax system.”

Here’s the video via YouTube:

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