LETTER: Manchin slows down the Build Back Better bill

The Monday Associated Press article about Joe Manchin and the Build Back Better bill was very well written. But press secretary Jen Psaki seems to have a very basic misunderstanding of the roles of the three branches of the U.S. government.

She states that Sen. Manchin’s decision is “a breach of his commitments” to President Joe Biden by refusing to endorse the BBB bill.

There are three supposedly independent branches of the government committed to checks and balances on each other, not to subservient support of one to the other. Ms. Psaki appears to think otherwise, that the Senate is subservient to the executive branch, not independent and equal to it. Due to this misunderstanding of the Constitution, she needs a lesson in basic civics.

Sen. Manchin is not independently holding up the bill up. He has simply made the 50 Republican votes against the bill into a majority, not a tie ended by the vice president. Party subservience is certainly in play in the House and Senate, but Sen. Manchin is completely innocent of this. He simply wants and needs to understand better the long-term consequences and costs of the expensive bill, as all the legislators should.

Our country needs more Joe Manchins and fewer legislators who are, in fact, in lockstep with the executive branch.