Struck by Unjust Personal Tragedy, Activist Responds to Manchin’s Attempt to Kill Build Back Better Bill

Interview with Scott Desnoyers, Medicare4All activist & a leader in the New York chapter of the Poor People's Campaign, conducted by Scott Harris

West Virginia’s conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin effectively derailed President Biden’s Build Back Better plan when he announced on Fox News on Dec. 19, that he would oppose the $1.75 trillion human infrastructure bill. Provisions in the legislation would fund expansion of Medicaid and reduce premiums for Affordable Care Act coverage, extension of the child tax credit, universal pre-kindergarten, initiatives to address climate change, and affordable housing among other programs. Manchin’s vote is crucial given the Democrats need all 50 of their members’ votes to pass legislation through reconciliation.

Manchin, who engaged in five months of negotiations that reduced the original scope and $3.5 trillion price tag of the bill, said he couldn’t support the Build Back Better bill because of concerns about inflation and the now resurgent COVID pandemic. But according to news reports, Manchin told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs.

While Biden says he’ll continue to talk with Manchin to achieve a path forward on Build Back Better, Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is calling on the president to use his executive power to immediately implement provisions in the bill. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Scott Desnoyers, a father who lost his 29-year-old son Danny to suicide following a missed $20 premium insurance payment, became a Medicare-for-All activist and a leader in the New York state chapter of the Poor People’s Campaign. Here he responds to Manchin’s opposition to the Build Back Better plan and how supporters of the legislation should answer Manchin’s obstruction.

SCOTT DESNOYERS: What this man does? First off, he goes on the news and he talks about how China has got 90 percent of fossil fuel emissions, and meanwhile, he’s a coal baron. You know, he, you know, talks about how he fought paid family leave, but this is the wrong place for the bill.

Mr. Manchin is not worried about his children getting health care. He’s not worried about if his daughter has a blood clot and needs to get tested. Joe Manchin isn’t worried if his kids run out of insulin. Joe Manchin is going to talk about price tag.

Meanwhile, he doesn’t worry about the price tag for his children. They’re taken care of. That’s the problem we have with our politicians. We’re just asking to get what they have and they’re horrified, horrified that we want what is ours. They have what is ours, and they are horrified that we want what is ours to. And make an analogy all the time. We built the bakery. We built the ovens. We made the bread, and they’re making us beg for bread crumbs.

And then they’re saying, “Well, how are you going to pay for those bread crumbs?” Really? It’s our bread. We deserve what is ours. And I’m horrified that a coal baron would sit and worry about making environmental changes in a bill because it might affect the poorest of the poor that would get help. The poorest of the poor in his West Virginia, that don’t even have addresses on their mailboxes. They had to do a reconnaissance mission to do the state census to find out where these people live because they don’t even have an address. And he’s worried about expanding voting rights? Those people aren’t going to vote anyway, Mr. Manchin. They don’t have an address to do a mail in ballot. It’s disgusting that these people are sitting so pretty and are afraid to give us what’s ours, because how are we going to pay for it?

SCOTT HARRIS: As you said, West Virginia, the state that Joe Manchin represents, is one of the poorest in the country. And the irony, of course, is that a lot of the provisions in the Build Back Better plan that Joe Manchin almost single-handedly tore down would very specifically be a huge help to the people that he represents in West Virginia.

SCOTT DESNOYERS: Right. One hundred percent. And again, he is not worried about it. One hundred percent not worried about it. It would also affect, like the environmental parts of the bill, it would affect his coal business, wouldn’t it? I bet it would.

SCOTT HARRIS: Well, even the coal miners are in favor of this bill because they know that the economy is transitioning long ago away from coal, and there was funds in there to retrain folks to get other jobs out of the coal mines. So the miners union, the United Mine Workers of America were for this bill and upset that Joe Manchin has taken this path.

SCOTT DESNOYERS: The child tax credit alone would help out, you know, the poorest of the poor, which are all in his district in West Virginia.

SCOTT HARRIS: Scott, we’re almost out of time. But I wanted to ask you as you’ve been giving a lot of thought to how we change, how we change policies in our government that affect the great majority of people who are denied programs and are living under this austerity cloud. And it’s cost lives and has caused suffering. 

SCOTT DESNOYERS: There’s only one way we get there, and it is not by voting blue, no matter who. It is not voting for third party. It is not voting for red or blue. It’s us getting out in the streets demanding that they give us what is ours. We need to be bigger than the yellow vest movement. We need people to stop being complacent and saying, “Well, you know, you know, this guy or the other guy.” No, we need to hold our politicians accountable when they start strutting their false narratives and their lies, we need to call them out and we need to call them false narratives and lies.

All the politicians on the left are claiming that health care is a human right. And then, with a sleight of hand, tries to sell us health insurance which denies us health care for profits. That is 100 percent the opposite of guaranteeing health care. That is guaranteeing so much is going to get a contract that somebody will get paid to deny you health care.

We need to be out in the streets calling out our politicians, saying “This ain’t right. Stop killing our children for money.”

For more information about the Poor People’s Campaign, visit poorpeoplescampaign.org and the New York chapter of the Poor People’s Campaign at poorpeoplescampaign.org/committee/new-york.

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