What game is Senator Joe Manchin playing? A week after calling for “press the pause button” on Democrats’ offer for $ 3.5 trillion in new social spending, he reportedly said he could agree to up to $ 1.5 trillion .

This is on top of the $ 1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill that is largely its baby, which is now awaiting approval in the House.

Even reduced, this madness would still hamper the economy, like Manchin himself described last week in the Wall Street Journal: “In the past 18 months, we have spent more than $ 5,000 billion to fight the coronavirus pandemic. Now, Democratic leaders in Congress are proposing to pass the biggest spending bill in history regardless of rising inflation, crippling debt, or the inevitability of future crises. “

Now the West Virginia Democrat is ready to partially bow – an open invitation to negotiate that is too likely to end well above what he says today is acceptable.

Good: he wants the $ 1.5 trillion in social spending “paid,” which means no new borrowing. But he knows full well that Congress regularly “covers” new spending with various fictitious assumptions.

And even if he doesn’t this time around, it means hefty tax hikes hitting the economy as well. The Senate plan for the bill includes a rate hike on individuals and businesses, which would stifle business investment, slow the economy, and return the nation to Obama-era stagnation, the working class in particular losing ground.

Maybe Manchin is just giving the left a reason to hope, so people like The Squad aren’t torpedoing their infrastructure bill out of spite. Otherwise, he’s just negotiating how hard it is to hit an economy that’s still struggling to get back to a boom time.

A trillion here, a trillion there, and the progressive loons will always spend America in disaster.