Briahna Joy Gray: Push toward major social spending amid pandemic was ‘short-lived’

Former national press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign Briahna Joy Gray said that despite initial widespread support for the wave of COVID-19 relief bills passed by Congress, this “new era of spending” has been “short-lived.”

Gray’s comments come as some moderate Democrats vocalized their opposition to new spending packages. 

In an interview on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Gray commented on Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) recent proposal for parents to show proof of work in order to receive child tax credit payments. 

Gray explained that there was “a lot of crowing in the period of time after each of the COVID relief bills were passed about the extent to which that Biden was really stepping up to the political moment that the COVID crisis demanded.” 

“But what you’re seeing right now is that that window is, in fact, short-lived, and we’re not going to get the kind of revolutionary push toward social democracy in a moment like this without… a more concerned understanding of what we need from more radical leadership,” she argued. 

She went on to say that “one of the most radical parts, progressive parts of … the child tax credit is the fact that people who earn so little money that they don’t actually file taxes, have been able to benefit, and that includes about half of Black and brown children.”

“That is a population that’s really set to be punished by these kinds of work requirements that Manchin’s talking about right now,” she added. 

Watch part of Gray’s interview above.