Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) was not the Grinch who stole President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better legislation, says Hugh Hewitt in The Washington Post. Instead, he says, it was the Congressional Budget Office, which cast a skeptical eye on the Democrats accounting. Assists go to the consumer price index and the producers price index, both of which recently hit highs not seen in decades, and to the Federal Reserve, clearly spooked by those numbers.

A perfect storm of common sense, accountants and economists sunk BBB, says Hewitt, which would have been gasoline on inflation’s already burning fire.

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