There appear to be a couple of big hurdles for Sen. Joe Manchin to agree to President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan. Both highlight Manchin’s incredible selfishness and corruption. One big one is the key policy that has done more to reduce child poverty and hunger than any policy in years. The expanded Child Tax Credit, included in pandemic relief, builds on an existing program: the government helping to subsidize parents with tax relief. What’s different now is that the payments are a bit more generous, and are available to more people, and have been coming every month rather than with the annual tax refund. As Laura Clawson wrote, all of the evidence is in to show what that money is actually doing: “According to the Census data, 59% of families bought food with the money, 52% made utility payments, 45% paid the rent or the mortgage, 44% bought clothing, and 40% paid education costs.” Nearly all families—nine out of 10—reported using the monthly help for those essential purposes. Not illegal drugs, as Manchin (who apparently still lives rhetorically in 1983) believes. But it’s not just the idea that maybe some people who don’t deserve to feed their children would get help keeping Manchin from signing on—it’s his coziness with King Coal and the very deep pockets of the industry’s executives who have lobbied him extensively on opposing this bill. Manchin leads among all senators, Democrat or Republican, for fossil fuel industry campaign donations. That’s who he hangs out with, but his own personal bank account is padded regularly from the blind trust he holds: $500,000 to $1 million, according to last year’s disclosure forms. That trust holds Enersystems, a Manchin family-owned business that sells the remnants of coal from abandoned mines to one of the state’s coal-burning and big polluting power plants. Read more