‘Manchin has rhetoric … We’ve got the facts’

Joe Manchin says the country can’t afford Build Back Better. Economist Jeffrey Sachs has the numbers that prove otherwise, and he’s taking them directly to the senator’s home state of West Virginia on Monday.

Dr. Sachs, along with the co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival — Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis ––  will join a community forum and news conference with poor and low-income people at 2 p.m. Monday, Nov. 8, at 520 Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 520 Kanawha Blvd West, in Charleston. He’ll talk about Build Back Better and answer questions from those who attend.

As Pam Garrison, tri-chair of the West Virginia PPC, says: “Manchin has rhetoric. We’ve got the facts.”

The event will be livestreamed here.

At a virtual news conference on Thursday, Dr. Sachs said West Virginia has the lowest median household income and the lowest life expectancy in the U.S. Meanwhile, Sen. Manchin complains that the country can’t afford the economic investment in people that Build Back Better provides while refusing the way to pay for it: taxing the wealthiest people in the country.

“I would expect a senator of West Virginia to be railing against the rich and the powerful and all the wealth going to the top on behalf of the good people of West Virginia,” said Dr. Sachs, a professor at Columbia University, economist and author. “The rich people need to pay something so that the good people of West Virginia can live, can enjoy life, can see their children healthy, can see their children going to good schools – and that to me is the job of the senator of West Virginia and the congressional delegation.”