I've spent a good year plus slagging WV Dem Sen. Joe Manchin over his constant games, screwing Democrats over at every damn turn as his games consistently killed climate change and environmental legislation in President Biden's Build Back Better plan. Manchin was willing to play his 50th Dem vote at every turn, and he kept getting away with it.
That was until earlier this month when he finally stuck a pitchfork in the chest of the legislation and finally became the bad guy in the story. The reaction from Democrats and the press was that Manchin would be remembered as one of the great villains in history, the man that killed climate change legislation and handed the planet over to Big Energy to cook all of us alive.
I've said before that Manchin, for whatever reason, didn't want his legacy to be nothing more than a back-country coal baron who screwed the planet over. But it didn't seem like he cared anymore.
And today, Manchin finally drove the knife in.
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday reached a deal with Democratic leaders on a spending package that aims to lower health-care costs, combat climate change and reduce the federal deficit, marking a massive potential breakthrough for President Biden’s long-stalled economic agenda.
The new agreement, brokered between Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), opens the door for party lawmakers to try to advance the measure next week. It caps off months of fierce debate, delay and acrimony, a level of infighting that some Democrats saw as detrimental to their political fate ahead of this fall’s critical elections.
Under the deal, Schumer secured Manchin’s support for roughly $433 billion in new spending, most of which is focused on climate change and clean energy production. It is the largest such investment in U.S. history, and a marked departure from Manchin’s position only days earlier. The Democrats coupled the spending with provisions that aim to lower health-care costs for Americans, chiefly by allowing Medicare to begin negotiating the price of select prescription drugs on behalf of seniors.
To pay for the package, Manchin and Schumer also settled on a flurry of changes to tax law that would raise $739 billion over the next decade — enough to offset the cost of the bill while securing more than $300 billion for cutting the deficit, a priority for Manchin. Democrats sourced the funds from a series of changes to tax law, including a new minimum tax on corporations and fresh investments in the Internal Revenue Service that will help it pursue tax cheats.
Taken together, the package represents more than some Democrats once thought they might win from Manchin, who repeatedly has raised fiscal concerns with his own party’s ambitions. Only two weeks ago, the moderate from West Virginia, a coal-heavy state, signaled his opposition to new climate investments out of a fear that spending increases — funded in part by tax hikes — could harm the economy and worsen inflation.
“This is the most significant action we’ve taken on climate, that we will take on climate and clean energy, ever,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who led Democrats on a plan that would have punished polluters in the electricity sector before Manchin blocked it.
But the new agreement still totals significantly less than Democrats had hoped to achieve through the more sweeping, roughly $2 trillion initiative known as the Build Back Better Act. Manchin angered many colleagues when he scuttled his party’s proposed overhaul to the country’s health care, education, climate, immigration and tax laws last December, a version of which passed in the House. Manchin described that since-abandoned plan in defiant terms Wednesday.
“For too long, the reconciliation debate in Washington has been defined by how it can help advance Democrats’ political agenda called Build Back Better,” Manchin said in a lengthy statement, referring to Democrats’ initial, larger spending package that bore Biden’s 2020 campaign slogan.
“Build Back Better is dead, and instead we have the opportunity to make our country stronger by bringing Americans together,” Manchin said.
Biden, meanwhile, described the legislation as “historic,” stressing in a statement: “This is the action the American people have been waiting for.” The White House had issued its own ultimatum earlier this month, stressing that if Congress didn’t act on climate change, then Biden would issue executive orders to address the issue.
“This addresses the problems of today — high health care costs and overall inflation — as well as investments in our energy security for the future,” Biden said.
With an agreement in hand, Schumer soon set about briefing members of his party on the bill, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. It came as a surprise to many Democratic lawmakers, illustrating the tumultuous and secretive negotiations between Schumer and Manchin, which have spanned months.
From here, Schumer aims to finalize the proposal and advance it through the process known as reconciliation. The tactic allows Democrats to move their spending bill through the narrowly divided Senate using their 50 votes and Vice President Harris’s tiebreaking power, sidestepping Republicans’ opposition and filibuster. Late Wednesday, Schumer said the hope is to “vote on this transformative legislation next week," though it is not yet clear if his entire caucus supports the scaled-back plan.
The Senate voted Wednesday to pass a long-awaited bill aimed at boosting US semiconductor production in a bid to increase American competitiveness.
It passed with broad bipartisan support, 64 to 33.
The measure now goes to the House for approval before it can be sent to President Joe Biden for his expected signature.
The legislation is aimed at addressing a semiconductor chip shortage and making the US less reliant on other countries such as China for manufacturing. Supporters say the measure is important not only for US technological innovation, but for national security as well.
It sets up incentives for domestic semiconductor manufacturing as well as research and development and includes more than $50 billion in funding for that aim. It includes a number of provisions aimed at bolstering scientific research, including authorizing billions of dollars for the National Science Foundation, the Department of Commerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has praised the bill as a major bipartisan achievement and touted it as highly consequential.