Last year, I wrote about how West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin was acting like a bad boyfriend to the Democratic party. The man was stringing his colleagues along for months and holding climate legislation in limbo. I ate my words just a couple of weeks later when Manchin worked with Democratic leadership to revive the corpse of the Build Back Better Act. In helping to pass the U.S.’s most aggressive (and only) climate legislation to date, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Manchin helped make climate history. Now, it seems Manchin has, once again, decided to sing a different tune. The senator has made several moves in recent weeks to unravel the climate progress he made just last year. I love this fun game we get to play every few months!
A lot has changed in the year since Manchin helped pass the IRA. The senator is inching closer to a potential reelection race in 2024, even though he has not yet publicly announced his candidacy. If he does choose to run, he faces a potentially formidable challenger in West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, who filed Thursday to run for Senate. Like Manchin, Justice is politically malleable, switching his affiliation to Republican in 2017 after being elected; like Manchin, he also has personal fortunes tied to the coal industry. Various outlets have also reported that Manchin is considering a bid for the White House, as he reportedly is considering a run with an independent group to counter both Biden and Trump as nominees.
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It makes sense, then, that Manchin is ramping up attempts to distance himself from the legislation he helped pass that is increasingly unpopular with the Republican party. This week’s chaos started in an interview with right-wing blowhard Sean Hannity on Tuesday. Manchin ranted about the IRA, saying that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had told him the bill would be about “energy security,” but leaders have instead focused on the “environment” since the bill’s passage. (Weird to not realize how the bill you helped pass would be implemented, but okay.) Manchin said that he would consider “vot[ing] to repeal my own bill.”
The next day, on Wednesday, Manchin sided with Republicans to provide a deciding vote in a 50-49 move to reverse a Biden ruling on increased tailpipe emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks. The EPA calculated that the rule, finalized in December, would save up to 2,900 additional lives per year by 2045; environmentalists actually criticized the administration when it passed for not going far enough in limiting emissions. In a statement, Manchin said he supported the rule’s reversal to “stop government overreach.” (Biden is likely to veto the Senate’s move, meaning that the rule will probably go forward.)
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Incredibly, that isn’t all that Manchin’s been up to this week in terms of tarring his already-questionable legacy on climate. The erstwhile senator announced Wednesday he would cosponsor a bill authored by Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. The bill, initially introduced in February, would reinstate tariffs on solar panels imported from China, and is part of a dual Republican effort in both the House and the Senate. (The administration has said that it will veto this move, too.)
The partnership between Scott and Manchin is particularly funny. Last year after Manchin’s role in creating the IRA, Scott blasted him in an exclusive statement provided to Fox News.
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“Joe Biden has officially plunged America into a recession and how do Democrats in Congress respond? With MASSIVE SPENDING and even more RECKLESS SPENDING,” Scott told Fox. (The all-caps are his, by the way. Guess he wanted to convey that he was MAD.) “Democrats have never met a tax increase they didn’t like and Joe Manchin is a Democrat. Of course, Manchin is going along with Schumer, Biden, and Pelosi to push MASSIVE tax increases on Americans as we face 9.1% inflation, debt over $30 TRILLION, and enter a RECESSION.”
These moves this week pile on to other maneuvers Manchin has made in recent weeks to sabotage climate success, including threatening to sue the Biden administration over EV tax credits, writing legislation with Ted Cruz to ban gas stove bans, cheering the passage of the Willow Project, and siding with Republicans to block a Biden nominee intended to oversee oil and gas leasing.
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Three cheers for Manchin, the worst bad boyfriend the climate movement has ever had.
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