It’s back. President Biden’s Build Back Better Act is back. Again.

And it’s filled with expensive bad news for all sorts of West Virginians.

Trouble is, D.C. media this past week report that Sen. Joe Manchin may go along with Biden and Democrat leadership to bring the bill back from the dead.

There’s bad news for almost everyone. Higher taxes on businesses and job creators. Bigger out of pocket prices for insulin, along with price controls to wreck the free market.

More federal dollars for the climate change clown car while we pay $5 a gallon for gasoline.

Literally making things worse for everyone who pays a bill or drives to a job. Bigger government, bigger taxes, bigger prices, and a bigger black cloud over those here who just want to preserve rural health care in West Virginia.

Sen. Manchin has actually been quite the dam against so many of the Biden Administration’s terrible ideas. It would be odd to have him switch sides now.

The initial 190-pages or so of bill text sent to budget scoring have some of the worst news on the health care side for our seniors.

It raises the caps or maximum rate of increase of your Medicare Part D insurance premium by literally 50% per year.

It would make unlimited the maximum co-pay charged on insulin, which was just $35. That dismantles still more of what the Trump administration did to alleviate high costs of that and so many prescriptions.

On the drug side, the bill tries to place the blame for inflation in the economy on prescription drugs. Trouble is, while inflation took prices up on the basket of all goods last year by 8.6%, prescription drugs only went up 1.9% over the same span.

The reality is that inflation for the basket of all consumer goods went up at a higher than 9-percent rate for June. Food and gasoline prices (among others) even worse.

Instead of fixing the national issues with energy and food pricing created by this administration, Team Biden wants to put on a blindfold and change the subject.

West Virginians can’t afford $5 a gallon to drive into town for their scripts and groceries, let alone pay more for that stuff once they get there.

Moving dollars around within Medicare and drug reimbursements is just another D.C. shell game.

The goal of that shell game this time is to get health dollars moved into budget reconciliation.

That’s the arcane process by which the Senate Democrats try to avoid the filibuster and pass bills with just 50 votes and the Vice-President.

No Senate Republican is for this, and likely none will be.

As presented, this newest swing at Biden’s Build Back Better is just another massive trillion-dollar tax & spend law that will cause more inflation, make health insurance and necessary prescriptions cost more.

Worse? The part not public yet will likely send our dollars to build windmills in Delaware or electric car charging stations in Guam. Expensive nonsense.

These are serious times, in need of serious leadership.

In this economy, any bill that absolutely raises taxes or drug and health care costs, is incredibly un-serious. Screwing around with senior health care hurts every American, liberal or conservative.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives will absolutely vote for this. They’ve already voted for worse. They absolutely do not care how mad the voters will be this fall.

Joe Manchin is one of the only people who can stop this. And, it’s going to be pretty hard to explain this to working folks in Moorefield and Moundsville.

Robert Cornelius is the former chairman of the Wood County Republican Executive Committee.