Will Loyal Obama Ally Again Support Tax-Spend-And-Borrow Agenda?

As President Barack Obama prepares to call, in a nationwide address tonight, for a reported $400 billion in new “stimulus” spending – to be paid for later with new debt and job-killing tax hikes – where does his loyal ally, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), stand?

Notably, West Virginians have heard this same jobs rhetoric from Obama and Kaine for the last several years.  Exactly a year ago, Obama promised a “plan that would start putting Americans to work right away.”

And as he cheered as his fellow Washington Democrats rammed their original $787 billion stimulus debacle into law, Manchin claimed it would create millions of new jobs and “make a big difference in the job market,” while his bosses in the Obama Administration even claimed their spending spree would hold unemployment below 8 percent.

But instead, the United States has lost 2.4 million jobs since Obama took office, and the country is now in its 31st consecutive month of above-8-percent unemployment.

Now, The New York Times reports that Obama’s latest “stimulus” plan will cost “hundreds of billions of dollars,” and Bloomberg reports that the Obama White House says they will “will call on Congress to offset the cost of the short-term jobs measures by raising tax revenue in later years” – in other words, spend the money now, but make Americans pay later with job-killing tax hikes.

“When it comes to jobs, West Virginians have been listening to the same empty promises from Joe Manchin and President Obama for the last several years,” said NRSC spokesman Chris Bond.  “It’s painfully clear that Obama and Manchin’s tax-spend-and-borrow economic agenda has failed to create the jobs they promised while driving our national debt to $14.6 trillion, and Manchin will continue to have a very difficult time explaining his support for these failed Obama policies to West Virginia voters.”