Kevin Dietsch
Late last year, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) bucked the overwhelming bulk of the Democratic Party and voted against the bipartisan infrastructure deal in protest to Democrats not passing the Build Back Better Act first. The proposals included in what was set to be Democrats’ signature social spending bill meant that much to him—and they still do.
Yet after news on Wednesday that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) agreed to a new version of the defunct Build Back Better bill, now called the Inflation Reduction Act, which lacks scores of the policies progressives originally fought for, Bowman said he was “glad we finally got to this point.”
To be sure, the congressman said he was “very disappointed and actually pretty angry” about all of the things that didn’t make it in the bill: Paid family leave, free community college, a permanent child tax credit and more but time was running short.