Joe Manchin is the face of moderate Democrat opposition to the Build Back Better Act. There is reporting that one of his objections to supporting the $1.7T social spending bill is the elimination of a provision that requires the person raising a child to be the one who receives the monthly child tax credit payment.

Manchin is a rare Democrat speaking out against the bloated bill over its cost and the burden it places on taxpayers. He doesn’t oppose the monthly child tax credit payments made to parents. He’s asking that if, for example, a grandparent is raising a child because the child’s parents are substance abusers. The grandparent obviously should receive the benefit. Manchin is concerned that the payments may go to supporting a parent’s drug addiction instead of going to the child’s needs.

This is not an unreasonable concern. Constituents in West Virginia have contacted his office to complain that the money is going into the wrong hands. He wants some measure of accountability that the assistance is limited to working parents as well as to grandparents if they are the ones raising the child. Manchin wants the money to follow the child. Manchin tells a story of a grandmother contacting him about her “crackhead daughter”. The daughter uses the money to buy drugs. One advocate of keeping the child tax credit in place is upset over Manchin’s use of the word‘crackhead’ when he tells the story.

JoAnna Vance, a mother of three from Beckley, West Virginia, is a recovery fellow with the American Friends Service Committee’s West Virginia Economic Justice Project. She attended a meeting with about a dozen other advocates at Manchin’s Charleston office in September, where they pressed the senator to support the child tax credit.

Vance, 32, said the senator pushed back on the benefits, which have paid parents as much as $300 per child each month since July.

“He said he’s gotten phone calls from one grandmother specifically talking about her crackhead daughter ― he used the word crackhead three times ― talking about her crackhead daughter running around using the child tax credit to buy drugs and get high instead of it going where it needs to go,” Vance told HuffPost.

As someone in long-term recovery from substance use disorder, Vance said she was offended by Manchin’s use of the word “crackhead,” though she acknowledged he may have merely been repeating verbatim what he’d heard from the person who called his office.

“I was just completely in shock that he even said ‘crackhead,’ I was like, ‘Wow,’” Vance said. “I’ve just been chewing on it for this long.”

Really? That’s the problem, not the fact that the grandmother was voicing concern over how the tax credit was being used? As noted, he is likely just repeating what grandma told him. Good heavens. Manchin’s office pushed back on the ridiculous charge that Manchin is somehow insensitive to those with substance abuse problems.