While we're all waiting for the announcement out of Camp Runamuck that George (The Animal) Steele will be the next Fed chairman, the elves in the Congress are busy, busy, busy selling out the Rust Belt suckers to whom, if the guilt-ridden elite political media is to be believed, we all owe a cookie for the next decade. First up, the coal miners! From the MetroNews in West Virginia:

The Miners Protection Act to address health and pension benefits for coal miners and their families will not be included in a continuing resolution bill, according to a Tuesday announcement. Congress said the bill, which would continue to fund the federal government, only has four months of funding for those retired miners and their widows. Cecil Roberts, international president of the United Mine Workers of America, called the announcement "a slap in the face to all 22,000 of them who desperately need their health care next month, next year and for the rest of their lives."

But, wait, isn't West Virginia represented in the Senate by that highly influential Democrat, Joe Manchin, who's been running around telling every camera crew inside the Beltway that that his party has to get right with the workin' man? Yeah, he's got the juice, no question.

Approximately 12,500 retired union miners and the widows of retirees stand to lose their pension and health care benefits across the nation.

Next up, the steelworkers! There was a nifty provision in a bill to improve the nation's sorry-ass water infrastructure by which those improvements would be made with American steel made by American steelworkers. This surely would have provided a substantial job at good wages for American workers, who are the salt of the earth, and who abandoned Hillary Rodham Clinton because she did not "speak" to them, nor give them cookies, either.

Ah, my friends. You reckoned without our favorite zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, as his congressional colleague Senator Tammy Baldwin informs us.

Last Thursday night in Cincinnati, on the first stop of his "Thank You Tour," Trump said his infrastructure plan would follow two simple rules: "Buy American and hire American. We're going to do it ourselves." However, on Friday, the media reported that Speaker Ryan was leading a push to remove the Buy America reform from Water Resources Development Act (WRDA). Senator Baldwin joined a bipartisan a group of 25 Senators in sending a letter to House and Senate leaders calling for her Buy America provision to be put back into the final bill to support U.S. steel and iron workers and manufacturers.

Senator Sherrod Brown was not pleased, either.

"By stripping meaningful Buy America rules from the water infrastructure bill, Washington leadership is choosing China and Russia over Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin," said Brown. "This was the first major test of whether Washington establishment Republicans would live up to President-elect Trump's promises to put American products and American workers first – they failed, and American iron and steel workers will pay the price." The original Buy America rule in the Senate bill would have permanently amended the Safe Drinking Water Act to require American-made steel and iron be used in infrastructure projects funded by the Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF). Instead, Republican leaders stripped that language and replaced it with a one-year provision that is already in effect and does nothing to further ensure American steel and iron will be used in water infrastructure projects moving forward.

Folks, you're being sold down the river. I feel for you because selling you down the river is not good for the country. It never was. It is not immigrants who are selling you down the river. It is not minorities who are selling you down the river. It is not LGBTQ folks who are selling you down the river. Please remember all of that when you wake up pissed that you're, you know, down the river. If you look around the table and can't figure out who the mark is…

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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