Joe Manchin's Tax Hike On The Working Class
The yacht-owning coal baron crushed low-income families while representing one of America's poorest states.
Note: I’m publishing some regular musings here. Use this button to subscribe, which will alert you to them and sign you up to The Lever’s free email newsletter.
Despite representing one of America’s poorest states, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D) decided in 2021 to kill legislation to extend existing tax credits that were helping the working class. The expiration of the tax credits resulted in more than 3 million kids being thrown into poverty. New data shows it also resulted in a massive regressive tax increase on the working class.
The numbers from the Institute On Taxation And Economic Policy are stark: The Manchin Tax Increase resulted in a single mom with two kids making $25,000 being hit with a 12.5 percent tax increase, and a married couple with two kids making the same amount being hit with a nearly 9 percent tax increase.
While Manchin was killing the tax credits, the yacht-owning coal-baron senator was fighting to preserve government subsidies for fossil fuel companies raking in huge profits.
And yet while championing that corporate largesse, Manchin insisted he was worried that “our economy, or basically our society (is) moving towards an entitlement mentality.” He suggested that continuing the expanded child tax credit would incentivize people to remain unemployed, and would encourage lazy parents to buy drugs.
That ended up being a lie, according to academic studies published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The most recent of those reports found no “effects of the expanded benefit, and temporary removal of the work requirement, on labor force participation and a total hours worked.”
If you like this post, pitch in to the tip jar for The Lever, an award-winning reader-supported investigative news outlet that holds the powerful accountable.