Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s October 31 trick-or-treat Halloween deadline for a grand Democratic deal on a trillion dollar infrastructure package and a $5 trillion entitlement welfare state, big government socialism, orgy of massive spending, taxing, regulating and Green New Dealing in all likelihood is not going to be met.

There are two major reasons for this — Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Other, quieter Democratic senators lurk in the caucus, but they, too, are not happy with the massive spending bills. Senator Manchin doesn’t like spending. Senator Sinema doesn’t like taxing. Together, they make a lovely couple. I’d say they’re the number one power couple in Washington today.

I’m sorry Mr. Manchin will accept tax hikes. I give him a lot of credit, though, for his insistence that social welfare spending and entitlements must be means tested and include workfare. These are crucial policy principles. Far-left progressives don’t like them. Mr. Manchin is holding strong so far.

The one-man Mountain State monument has also done a great service in refusing to sign on to the clean electricity performance bill. That’s the one that sets a target of 2035 for a carbon-free electric grid. the Bill’s worth about $150 billion of renewable subsidies and fossil fuel tax penalties.

Mr. Manchin’s from West Virginia, which produces a lot of coal, oil and natural gas. So I get that.Take a look around the world and you’ll see what a catastrophe President Biden’s idea would be.

The wind stopped blowing in the North Sea so the British economy is hemorrhaging with natural gas prices eight times what Americans are paying and now they’re turning to coal.

Germany is a big renewable energy country but President Putin is not providing enough natural gas for the German economy despite Nord Stream 2, and Germany’s experiment with renewables a few years ago was a catastrophe.

So now Germans, too, are scrambling for coal, which at the moment is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. The moral of the story is that wind and solar are not reliable energy sources. Oil, natural gas, and coal are reliable. Coal sales in America are actually up for the first time since 2014.

Natural gas prices were soaring. They’ve come off a bit, but are still expensive.

The oil price is more than $80 a barrel. It’s the middle class that’s getting hit by this inflation. The best renewable of them all, nuclear power, has been completely shot down by the Greenies. So Mr. Manchin’s doing everybody a favor by stopping this crazy carbon-free electric grid idea. Some 80% of American energy is fossil fuels. Mr. Biden wants to stomp on it.

The President’s Green New Deal, regulatory threats along with tax hikes and, by the way, jaw-boning banks not to make loans to fossil fuel companies, all have stifled fossil fuel production. We’re 2 million barrels a day short of where we were pre-pandemic. That’s the fossil fuel shortage. Producers don’t want to invest and produce because of government policy threats. Who can blame them?

Renewables excluding nuclear are still only 3% or so of our power. You think this is all going to change in 14 years? That’s the nuttiest thing I’ve heard yet from the Bidens.

So, we all owe Joe Manchin a big favor.

One other point on social spending: these unbelievable housing subsidies are under fire by Mr. Manchin and other moderates. That issue is an incredible $300 billion subsidy plan that would support $90 billion for rental assistance, which is completely unnecessary because relief money for renters was never spent and the eviction rate remained low during the pandemic.

Some $80 billion to reconstruct public housing along with Green New Deal housing, $37 billion for the National Housing Trust Fund, and my favorite, which is a $10 billion plan that would provide a $25,000 grant to first-time homebuyers with eligibility based on minority status.

In other words, more discrimination, more woke, and more Critical Race Theory from the far left. This is not the only program based on discrimination, but the whole lot of them add up to an outrage.

Then of course we come to the massive tax hikes and then programs to subsidize non-work and penalize work, which Casey Mulligan and Vance Ginn in the Wall Street Journal estimate could cost the economy between 5 million and 9 million jobs over the next decade. Incredible.

As far as I know, Senator Sinema is opposed to the tax hike on business and individuals. Good for her. So, Mr. Manchin has our back on welfare dependency, means testing, workfare, and energy. Senator Sinema has our back on taxes. That’s why they make such a lovely couple, and I wish them well.

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From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox News.