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“Sen. Joe Manchin has said he’ll oppose an economic measure he’s been negotiating with Democratic leaders if it includes climate or energy provisions or higher taxes on the rich and corporations, a Democrat briefed on the conversations said late [last] Thursday.” AP News
The right argues that Democrats’ troubles are due to a narrow majority, not Manchin specifically.
“As bad as today’s consumer-price index read on inflation is, it could have been worse. One man has stood in the way of Joe Biden’s ambitions to flood the economy with trillions in off-budget government spending even after Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan touched off the worst inflationary wave in 40-plus years. The $5 trillion Build Back Better plan would have acted like a nuclear explosion for inflation. We all know who kept us from the brink of disaster…
“Manchin [recently] declared 9.1% inflation ‘a clear and present danger to our economy.’… More than one person asked the obvious question after Everett’s initial scoop. How will Manchin be able to explain a vote for even a rump BBB with hundreds of billions in new spending after making a statement like this? The answer: not easily, although Manchin has made similarly categorical statements in the past only to continue negotiating on a reconciliation package of some sort.”
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
“Depending on which agenda item we're discussing, there are 51 or 52 senators who oppose Biden's agenda, not just one. That is not Manchin's fault, it is the fault of President Biden's narrow, no-coattails victory in November 2020…
“Democrats actually lost ground in state-level elections, dropping two state legislative chambers and one governorship [in 2020]. Democrats in the U.S. House saw their comfortable 36-seat majority shrink down to an uncomfortable nine-seat edge. As for the Senate, only Georgia's peculiar general election runoff rules saved Biden by allowing Jon Ossoff to win a seat in January instead of losing it in November…
“In short, Biden came into office with no ideological mandate… Biden is now the most unpopular president in history precisely because he ignored this. He arrogantly behaves now as if he won a clear mandate in 2020 to make enormous changes. He jumped to impose environmentalist restrictions on fossil fuels; he has signed massive spending increases, causing devastating inflation; he has proposed further spending increases; he has proposed massive tax increases… Manchin is probably saving Biden from himself right now.”
David Freddoso, Washington Examiner
“The Democrats don’t need a program that can command the support of one coal-state Democrat but one that can win the cooperation of ten or twelve Republicans — Republicans who may not share progressive views on climate change but who might like to see gas-producing U.S. states increase their export markets, and might also like to see their constituents’ energy prices and energy-grid reliability brought to a more desirable condition by clean, reliable, safe, modern nuclear energy — which is, if we are being honest about it, the only practical and sufficient source of electricity that is in fact operationally zero-emissions…
“‘But the Republicans are intractable!’ Democrats will complain. ‘They are unreasonable! And they don’t care about climate change!’ All of that may be true — but, if your chosen profession is politics, adapting the political realities with which you are presented is the job — not some ancillary part of the job, but the heart and the foundation of it. Chuck Schumer’s inability to win over one Democrat — or, dare we dream of it, a handful of Republicans — is an indictment of Chuck Schumer, not of Joe Manchin.”
Kevin D. Williamson, National Review
The left is disappointed that Manchin will not support legislation necessary to mitigate the climate crisis.
The left is disappointed that Manchin will not support legislation necessary to mitigate the climate crisis.
“Last summer, while the climate negotiations dragged on, record-breaking heat waves killed hundreds of Americans. Hurricanes, wildfires and floods pummeled the country from coast to coast. Over the last 10 years, the largest climate and weather disasters have cost Americans more than a trillion dollars — far more than the Democrats had hoped to spend to stop the climate crisis…
“Mr. Manchin’s refusal to agree to climate investments will hurt the economy he claims he wants to protect. The package would have built domestic manufacturing, supporting more than 750,000 climate jobs annually. It would have also fought inflation, helping to make energy bills more affordable for everyday Americans…
“[But] As Upton Sinclair put it: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’… A Times investigation found that [Manchin] personally profited from coal, making roughly $5 million between 2010 and 2020 — about three times his Senate salary. Coal has made Mr. Manchin a millionaire, even as it has poisoned the air his own constituents in West Virginia breathe.”
Leah C. Stokes, New York Times
“Because the bill would have spent less money than it collected in taxes, the bill was more likely to cool the economy down than heat it up. By reducing long-term demand for oil, the bill was likely to lower gasoline prices—one of the biggest causes of the country’s recent inflation. An earlier version of the package would have saved U.S. consumers hundreds of dollars in energy costs over the next eight years, according to an independent analysis from researchers at Princeton…
“Adopting a climate-and-new-taxes framework for the bill was Manchin’s idea, and Manchin has spent the past few months negotiating its specifics with Schumer. For Manchin to back out now, so late in the process, reveals his profound fickleness as a negotiator. Manchin looks not like a levelheaded voice of fiscal moderation, but as windblown and capricious as the weather vane on his houseboat.”
Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic
Some argue that “the rage at the West Virginia senator is ultimately misplaced because Democrats can do no better than him. When he retires or loses a reelection bid, a Democrat may not represent West Virginia for another generation. Manchin’s Democratic label has done more good than harm for the party because it can only get worse from here…
“Manchin is the last prominent Democrat in a state Donald Trump carried by almost 40 points. No one in his stead would have voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, as Manchin did earlier in the year. And Democrats of all ideological stripes must come to understand they have, quite literally, no leverage over him…
“What makes Manchin a lousy senator is his utter inability to deliver for West Virginia. His remarkable leverage in the Senate has not been used to deliver generation-defining funding for a desperately poor and environmentally ravaged population. A different kind of senator, even a so-called centrist, could hold Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Democrats hostage for a New Deal for West Virginia, revitalizing the state with green manufacturing jobs and sweeping anti-poverty programs. Manchin has no interest in that sort of legacy.”
Ross Barkan, New York Magazine
