 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. US President Joe Biden's ambitious $1.75 trillion billback better plan suffered a major blow when West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin declared that he could not support it. Manchin's support was essential for the bill to be passed in the Senate, which is split evenly between the Republicans and the Democrats. The setback to the plan means large-scale governments spending on areas such as healthcare, housing and climate change will have to wait. Democrats and President Biden have been negotiating for months with Manchin and other senators such as Christian Sinema to somehow get them to support the bill. What is the immediate impact of the setback to the bill? How will ordinary Americans be affected? Is there any chance that the bill can get back on track or can some of the proposals be passed separately? Eugene Fourier of Breakthrough News explains. I think the at least temporary defeat, but what seems like a permanent defeat for the Build Back Better agenda is going to have a huge impact on working families. First and foremost, this means that there is not going to be an extension of the child tax credit, which has given hundreds of dollars for a number of months now to families that are just doing their best to make it. And it also means that moving forward, a number of critical proposals will not be seen in terms of Medicare, for instance, which is the healthcare system for older Americans and in many ways is one of the better forms of healthcare that is affordable for people in this country. There is not going to be extended coverage for vision, for dental, for hearing aids, for things like that, that people critically need, which means a number of poor working class seniors will continue to essentially have to move without the correct healthcare that they should be able to have, that to be able to live a full life because there is not going to be a Build Back Better agenda. It certainly means, as it concerns the issue of climate change, that almost nothing substantive is going to be done this year or almost certainly next year in order to rain in carbon emissions. It also means that the richest people in this country, billionaires that got a huge amount of money over the pandemic, are going to not have any sort of higher taxes for broader provisions. It means that tens of billions of dollars that was going to go to promote affordable housing in a country where millions, tens of millions of people are desperately in need of really any housing, but certainly affordable housing, the 90 billion or so odd dollars that was going to that will not happen. It also means that America's public housing, which has basically turned into a slum system because it's so run down that billions of dollars that we're going to go in to help improve people's living standards there, that also is not going to happen. Other things that were already sort of pre-dropped out of the bill before we even got to this level, but that are also certainly not to happen, there are a number of provisions that we're going to make it easier to unionize and things that have been pushed by unions. Now that had already been dropped out of the bill, but since the bill is not happening in any way shape or form, I think it's also worth mentioning that things that would make it easier for workers to join unions or really to put it a different way, make it harder for employers to break the law to prevent people from joining unions. That's not going to happen either. And we're going to see many other things. There's other tax credits that are helping working class people. That's not going to happen. Other expansions of social programs that are out there, none of which seem to be willing to take place. Now there's a whole discourse about whether or not the bill is dead 100% for sure. But I think it's worth noting here that this means the defeat of the Build Back Better package that any social legislation to address the basic needs of working in poor people and honestly a lot of so-called middle class people in America is totally off the table. And the only reason it's off the table is a handful of moderate senators didn't want to increase taxes on billionaires and people with hundreds of millions of dollars. When you really look at it, the big issue with a lot of these programs was not even just that it was one big package but even how it was going to be put out there. People like Joe Manchin, for instance, who have already said, let's start from scratch and build a new bill. They have very different views in terms of means testing and other things from on social programs that other people don't want to see. Each individual program in a way, part of why nothing has happened so far on a lot of these issues is people in Congress are so far apart. And there have been multiple proposals coming through the traditional legislative process to deal with a lot of these things as one-offs and those have totally failed. So I think it's possible it's an election year. So anything popular always has a chance to pass in an election year. But I think what we've seen now is the divisions on the individual bills and the package of the bills and really the precondition for any of this moving forward, which is significantly higher taxes on the wealthy who pay almost no taxes in the United States right now, that seems to be a non-starter. No Republican is for it. And it looks like a significant minority of Democrats also want to help the rich stay richer. And that underlying fact in and of itself, the inability to go after the pharmaceutical companies, sky high profits and things like that really make it seem to me that even if there was some desire to move on some of this, how to even raise the money to do it is up in the air. So it's possible. Biden has not really shown a lot of excitement around executive action. So I'm not really looking at that either. But I think, again, that's really going to be a major question of, is there mobilization in 2022 that makes people feel like they have to pass something? And I think that's still an open question. Joe Manchin is clearly stood out as the major obstacle to this vital plan being approved by the US Congress. One man is in a position to block over a trillion dollars in spending. However, is Manchin the only roadblock? Who does Manchin represent and what other interests have been at play in this issue? Yeah, I think Joe Manchin seems to love the spotlight. And in many ways, he's done a huge favor to other conservative, they call them moderates, but I don't really know what is moderate about their positions. They're actually extreme that we should do absolutely nothing to save the planet and absolutely nothing to help those in the deepest poverty in this country. But Manchin has done them a huge favor by essentially being willing to take on his own all of the opposition. Now, of course, in the Senate, one vote can make or break things in general. Now, there's more complicated than that, but let's just say, yes, one vote can make or break things. So it's not as if one person can't hold up a lot, which speaks to how undemocratic the US system is. You know, Kristen Sinema was another person who was noted, but it was always rumored in a lot of the press that there was probably five, maybe seven, maybe eight or nine people who agreed with Joe Manchin, who were just staying quiet and allowing him to be the voice of their opposition. And we saw in the House where there is also razor thin majority for the Democrats in general, but also amongst those who are very conservative and don't want to see this pass. You know, there were four or five people that were willing to come out. Stephanie Murphy is one person who comes to mind a longtime conservative Democrat. There's a few other people whose names are alluding me right now, but you saw a few more people like that. But by and large, Joe Manchin, and I don't know if they agreed on this. I don't know if it's a deliberate strategy. I don't know if he's just willing to play the role. But basically, he's created the perception that it really is just him, that he's the only person and that one person is holding it up. And I think that has done a big disservice to the population in this country and around the world, because we haven't seen the true depth and the true breadth of the fact that there is a significant faction of the Democrats that agree 100%. And let's remember, these people are 100% in lockstep with corporate America, the business roundtable, which represents it's the trade association for all the biggest corporations in America. So that means all the biggest corporations in the world that said nothing should pass. There should be no build back better and that it was bad. And we've seen a section of the Democrats along with the entire Republican Party embrace that. And Joe Manchin is playing the villain. He's doing a great job playing the villain. And he's misdirecting from a lot of other people who obviously agree with him, but preferred not to take the political hit in the midterm elections or whenever their next elections are coming up. The setback to this bill has yet again raised questions of whether any progressive spending measures or welfare measures can be passed by the U.S. Congress. What is the future of such proposals considering the political paralysis in the halls of power? How are people's movements responding to such situations? Eugene analyzes. You know, I think that for progressive politics, this says something very clear. First and foremost is that the Democratic Party is not going to be an instrument for change no matter what they say when the election time comes around. I mean, when we're talking this time last year, they were going to give everyone a $2,000 check the second they walked into office and they never did that amongst a range of other promises. Whether we're talking about Joe Biden himself who I think is very conservative in many of his views but or the Democratic Party significantly, there is a significant faction that is totally captured by capital. I think most of them are pursuing a capitalist agenda. That's no secret, but you know, there are many people who are in the Democrats who are willing to see some changes, but not enough of them that actually can make a difference in terms of the electoral math. And then looking forward to 2022, I'm maybe a little less sanguine that it's definitely going to be a huge romp for Republicans. I think that the political situation is so volatile in the United States who knows what's going to happen, but conventional wisdom means that after the election next year, we're going to be in a position of divided government with Republicans controlling at least one house of the Congress, Democrats controlling at least one house and the presidency, the Supreme Court being controlled by the extreme right wing, which means that there's going to be complete and total paralysis for anything progressive on a legislative or a legal front, which means that quite frankly, the only way that there is going to be significant change in this country in the next two years, it seems to me, no matter who wins the election next year is going to be what we've already seen has driven the political conversation, the uprising in 2020, the strike tober strike wave this year, what we've seen, you know, in terms of people standing up for line three and other energy projects just putting their bodies in the way and trying to prevent them from happening with civil disobedience. It's really going to be the movement in the streets that can move anyone inside of the legislative offices to move off these points. If they will move, which is not a given, they will only move because they feel that their position of extreme power and privilege is somehow under threat because of mass movements that are in the streets in the workplaces and wherever else they may erupt. So I think that it's going to be a hard road. I think that the right wing, even though they're a minority of this country, is politically riding high in the saddle. A lot of that is because of the structural realities of the American political system and that ultimately it really is going to be a, as they say in American football, strength on strength kind of battle to see who really in the discourse and the cultural battles and the street battles and controversies are going to be able to emerge for a pro worker, pro people, progressive agenda, and then we'll see where it all ends up in 2024.