Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) may have graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in both international relations and economics, but numbers apparently aren’t her strong suit.
The liberal icon was livid over Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) decision to oppose President Joe Biden’s nearly $2 trillion “Build Back Better” plan. She described the Senate as “very entitled, very privileged and very protected,” while the House “most reliably delivers the actual will of the majority of people.”
She ripped Manchin for opposing Biden’s plan, then made an untrue claim during an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“It’s a farce in terms of, you know, plain democracy, because I represent more — or just, just as many, or more people than Joe Manchin does, perhaps more,” she said.
Not so, said the New York Post. “In fact, West Virginia’s population is 1.79 million, while New York’s 14th Congressional District, which encompasses parts of the Bronx and Queens, is comprised of about 750,000 people.”
Ocasio-Cortez of New York is a member of “The Squad,” along with Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. All of them slammed Manchin. Omar was the most vocal, calling Manchin’s stance “bulls***.”
“I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there,” Manchin said on Fox News. “This is a no on this legislation. I have tried everything I know to do. And the president has worked diligently. He’s been wonderful to work with. He knows I’ve had concerns and the problems I’ve had and, you know, the thing that we should all be directing our attention towards, the variant, a COVID that we have coming back at us in so many different aspects in different ways, it’s affecting our lives again.”
Omar lost it, saying, “we all knew that Senator Manchin couldn’t be trusted.”
“The excuses that he just made, I think, are complete bulls***,” Omar said. “It is really disheartening to hear him say that he has been trying to get there for the people of West Virginia because that’s a complete lie. The people of West Virginia would greatly benefit from their families having access to long-term elderly care and care for folks with disabilities. They would benefit from the expansion of the child tax credits. They will benefit from having access to pre-k. There are just so many things that, you know, the people of West Virginia desperately need. And we know that he is not working on behalf of their interests, and I really am just completely disappointed and disgusted by his reasoning.”
Ocasio-Cortez joined in. “Our entire democracy is on the line,” she wrote on Twitter. “We, as always, are here to fight for this agenda. What matters most to us is that it gets done.”
AOC also went profane. “We cannot just shrug our shoulders and accept this as some Charlie Brown moment,” she wrote. “So we need to get back in there and get this s*** done. Period.”
Tlaib also weighed in, saying on Twitter: “It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Manchin goes on Fox to kill BBB — he’s been promising to do it for months, and some folks didn’t want to believe him.” She said that after another bill passed, “We gave up our leverage … and [Manchin] got the fossil fuel subsidies he wanted.”
Pressley also slammed Manchin on Sunday, accusing him of “obstructing” Biden’s agenda. “He has continued to move the goalposts, he has never negotiated in good faith. And he is obstructing the president’s agenda. Eighty-five percent of which is still left on the table. And in obstructing the president’s agenda, he is obstructing the people’s agenda,” Pressley said on CNN.
And Bush had some words for Manchin, too. “Honestly, I’m frustrated with every Democrat who agreed to tie the fate of our most vulnerable communities to the corporatist ego of one Senator,” she wrote on Twitter. “No one should have backed out of our initial strategy that would have kept Build Back Better alive.”