 On Friday of last week, the House of Representatives finally voted on the Build Back Better Act and guess what? It actually passed, surprisingly. But it's not over yet. If you think this is the end, think again, because now it heads to the Senate where conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have the leverage to even further water down the Build Back Better Act. In fact, that's exactly what Joe Manchin has signaled he wants to do if there's going to be a vote on it in the Senate at all. So as HuffPost explains, the spending side of the bill isn't final yet either. Senator Joe Manchin, for example, still hasn't committed to voting for legislation that costs more than $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Manchin has concerns about additional federal spending on inflation, which is on the rise in contributing to higher prices on consumer goods. The coal state senator is also reportedly opposed to a proposed fee from methane emissions, as well as other climate measures in the bill. So yeah, I think that we all expected this. But Joe Manchin isn't the only one who's opposed to the current state of the Build Back Better Act because Bernie Sanders is also raising some concerns and he wants to make some changes, albeit in a different direction. He wants to improve it rather than gut it and make it worse. Senator Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, says he wants to see the legislation strengthened. The version of the bill the House passed expands Medicare insurance as the senator has called for, but it does not cover the cost of new dental and vision benefits as Democrats initially proposed. So I'm glad that Bernie Sanders isn't throwing in the towel just yet. I'm glad that he's still trying to improve the bill because as we discussed last week, the remaining provisions that are still in the bill that were good have been gutted. So even if there's something that remains in there, that's good. It's not what it previously was, but I want to show you how some of the good things in the bill are woefully inadequate. And in fact, some of them are fatally flawed. So for example, the most expensive thing in Build Back Better Currently still is the pre-K and universal childcare provision. Now, that is a good thing that I support. The problem is that the way that it's designed means that it's going to be flawed from the get-go. Now, this was detailed in a write-up by Matt Brunig of the People's Policy Project, and he explains that the bill won't lead to universal pre-K and childcare in practice. Rather, it's only going to get us halfway there because of the way that Democrats wrote the legislation. He explains popular coverage of these sections suggests that once they are passed by the Senate and signed by the President, these programs will become available to families across the country. But this isn't true. In order for either of these programs to actually be set up, each state will have to pass its own pre-K and childcare legislation, not only to accept the federal funds, but also to fund the state-level cost sharing required by the legislation and to set up the various state agencies to implement the plans. This means that the programs must be approved not just by the House, Senate, and President, but also by each state's lower house, upper house, and governor. Now, in that article, which I'll link to down below, he goes on to explain how there's only 14 states in America currently that are controlled by Democrats. But in the overwhelming majority of states, Republicans control at least one branch of government, which means that in most states, there's going to be one GOP veto point that this is going to pass, going to have to pass rather in order to have universal pre-K in that state. Now, there's a plethora of reasons as to why Republicans aren't going to let this slide, and specifically Matt Brunig comes up with eight reasons. He cites their past behavior. I mean, they've rejected the Medicare expansion and an extension of pandemic unemployment insurance benefits. They don't support social spending programs. There's also many other reasons as to why it's logical to expect them to reject this at the states. And if they do oppose it, and if a state doesn't get universal pre-K Medicare childcare because Republicans in that state don't want to pass it, well, then that will disproportionately leave out people of color. So it is not in good shape currently. I mean, if it passed as it was, I think that because of the climate change provisions as meager as they are, it'd be better than nothing considering that we made matters worse by just passing the corporate toll road bill, the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill. But there has to be changes made. It can't just be accepted in the current form. But the issue is that the more you improve it, the less likely you're going to have people like Manchin and Sinema supporting it. So what I expect is this conversation to continue now for a while. Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Sinema will continue to butt heads. But the problem is that Bernie Sanders, he doesn't have the leverage that he needs to kind of throw his weight around because progressives in the house voted for the so-called bipartisan infrastructure bill. So that means that since Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema already got what they wanted, they got that corporate handout for their donors, they have no incentive to support Build Back Better now in any form. So, you know, if it doesn't pass, it doesn't matter to people like Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema. So Bernie Sanders can only do so much knowing that he no longer has leverage because progressives in the house caved. But we'll just have to wait and see. And of course, I will continue to update you about the situation. But I'll be honest, I'm getting sick of talking about Build Back Better. It's a terrible name and the policy itself keeps getting watered down. So I'm not enthusiastic at all. But hopefully Bernie Sanders can still make a difference for what little power he has and leverage he has in the Senate. But I'm not too optimistic about that, to be honest.