The Patriot Post® · Biden Issues a Radical Veto

It took him 26 months to do it, but Joe Biden finally used his veto pen.

In doing so, he not only jeopardized the retirement savings of 150 million Americans, but he also did his supporters a favor of sorts: He resoundingly disabused them of the notion that the guy they preferred over mean-tweeting Donald Trump is Scranton Joe the Sensible Moderate.

He’s nothing of the sort.

Dude is Barack Obama’s third term and then some. (We say “and then some” because Obama couldn’t have gotten away with half of the awfulness that his decrepit former VP has.)

At issue is a Biden administration rule that allows (read: strongly encourages) retirement fund managers to consider environmental, social, and governance factors when making investments on behalf of their customers. The Republican-led House rightly rescinded the Biden rule, and when that bill went to the Democrat-controlled Senate, two Democrats up for reelection next year — West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Montana’s Jon Tester — crossed over to join Republicans in passing it.

Behold, that rarest of things in today’s Washington: a bipartisan bill. And yet.

“I just vetoed my first bill,” Biden crowed. “This bill would risk your retirement savings by making it illegal to consider risk factors MAGA House Republicans don’t like. Your plan manager should be able to protect your hard-earned savings — whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likes it or not.”

We’ve got to hand it to his handlers: Their audacity is, well, audacious. Notice how they pin this legislation on the Democrats’ favorite bogeywoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene — as if she alone was the decider. And, as we’ve said repeatedly, the standard Democrat “tell” is to accuse their political enemies of precisely that which they themselves are guilty. Biden’s rationale for this veto is no exception. What his statement conveys is the utterly and unequivocally false impression that Republicans — and not just any Republicans, but MAGA Republicans — had put the $12 trillion in retirement savings of 150 million Americans at risk.

That’s a lie from the pits of hell. In fact, Biden’s veto endangers that gigantic sum. How? By encouraging retirement planners to invest your hard-earned money not in a way most likely to yield superior financial performance but in a way most likely to promote the Left’s ESG utopia. Thanks to Biden’s veto, a portfolio manager will now think twice before investing in, for example, fossil fuels, which enjoyed superb performance this past year while other industries suffered miserably under Bidenomics.

“This Administration continues to prioritize their radical policy agenda over the economic, energy and national security needs of our country,” said Manchin, “and it is absolutely infuriating. … President Biden is choosing to put his administration’s progressive agenda above the well-being of the American people.”

We couldn’t agree more. But we’ve also grown a bit tired of Manchin’s allegiance to a political party so at odds with the interests of the people of his state, which went for Donald Trump in 2020 by 39 points. For that matter, we’ve grown especially tired of the way Manchin tends to magically grow a pair whenever he’s up for reelection.

Maybe next year is the year that his fellow West Virginians send him packing.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy also let Woke Joe have it, noting that this veto will hurt seniors and workers: “President Biden’s first veto is against a bipartisan bill that protects retirement savings from political interference,” he said. “It is clear that President Biden wants Wall Street to use your hard-earned money not to grow your savings, but to fund a far-left political agenda.”

So much for Biden the centrist. So much for the steady, sensible alternative to wild and crazy Bernie Sanders.

Little did this president’s, ahem, 81 million voters know that when the Democrat Party apparatus kneecapped the socialist Sanders and propped up Joey Unite Us, they were rigging the primary for a cognitively addled candidate who gave them their best chance of beating Trump while at the same time ushering into office a guy who’d give a whiff of legitimacy to Sandersesque radicalism.

Elections have consequences — even for our retirement accounts.