Joe Manchin's Lies About Poor People Are Beyond Disgusting

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has allegedly been telling his colleagues behind the scenes that one of the reasons he opposes the extended child tax credit payments is because he thinks low income Americans will just spend the money on drugs. This is an age-old Republican talking point, and it is completely divorced from reality - in addition to being shockingly cruel. Farron Cousins explains what people REALLY spent the money on.

Don't forget to like, comment, and share! And subscribe to stay connected!

Connect with Farron on Twitter

*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Well folks, first of all, Merry Christmas, it is Christmas morning. And I'm assuming since he hasn't already come out and done a, uh, press conference announcing he's changing his ways that Joe mansion was not in fact, visited by three ghosts last night to show him the error of his ways. So it is what it is, but none we can act right now as the ghosts of Christmas, past, present and future for Joe mansion himself. See earlier this week, it was revealed that Joe mansion has allegedly been telling his colleagues behind the scenes that he thinks poor people who are getting the child tax credit are spending the money on drugs. And that that's one of the reasons why he doesn't want to extend it. You know, because if you're a low income American it's clearly because you have a drug addiction problem. Well, luckily newspapers, statistics, reporters, and everybody have joined in to prove mansion 100% wrong.

You see, before we get into the actual numbers here, let's talk about mansions claim. We're talking about families in the United States, getting depending on their income level, as much as $300 per child per month for the last few months, not acting a huge drug budget bill for these folks, but it's helped them. It's helped, helped lift millions of children out of poverty here in the United States. You don't do that if you're spending the money on drugs, but this is one of the reasons why billback better failed. Joe mansion wanted to scale this down, wanted to put income caps in there, but here's how the money over the last few months has been spent. 31% of households said they spent it 29% said they saved it. 39% said they used it to pay off debt breaks down even further. Here's how they spent on the non debt items.

29% said they spent it on housing and transportation. 21% food, 16% school expenses, 12% clothing, 7% savings, four, uh, percent childcare, 4% debt, 3% other, huh? Is that other drugs? Is that what Joe mansion talking about? No, the answer is no. And what he is doing here is perpetuating an age old, Republican talking point. We have seen it for decades here in the United States. Poor people are poor because they're lazy or on drugs or a combination of both we've been told. And that's why we end up with these, you know, drug testing require environments for social programs. And as reports have indicated between the years two, uh, 2011 and 2017 in the states that had implemented drug testing as part of getting on their welfare programs, unemployment, whatever it is, only 1% of applicants actually tested positive for drugs. So 99%, which for the record is a smaller, uh, actually larger number, excuse me, that don't use drugs than the general population.

So the talking point is busted. They're actually less likely to be on drugs than the rest of the population, but that hasn't stopped Joe mansion from spreading his lies. But the truth is out there. It's readily available. These charts and graphs, you can find them very easily is a link to one in the description of the video in case you want to see it for share it with your friends or use it to call out Joe mansion on social media. Any of those things I am perfectly okay with. In fact, make that your Christmas gift to Joe mansion, send him these charts and show him what a lying piece of crap he is.