West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin is reportedly demanding new work requirements for families to qualify for the child tax credit. At the same time, Manchin may be enjoying a windfall from loopholes that provide the idle rich special tax preferences for passive income reaped without doing any work.

Manchin has publicly boasted of doing zero labor for his family’s coal company that has nonetheless been paying him hundreds of thousands of dollars annually and may be providing him preferential tax breaks on that passive, work-free income. Manchin has also previously supported legislation to expand tax breaks for heirs to vast family fortunes, and those benefits would flow to wealthy scions even if they are not working and they refuse to get a job.

The situation spotlights a hypocrisy now baked into America’s oligarchic politics: Politicians frequently demand draconian work requirements for programs that benefit working-class families, while those same politicians rarely apply such restrictions to tax preferences that enrich themselves, their families, and their donors.