“Inflation is absolutely killing many, many people. They can’t buy gas. It’s hard for them to buy groceries,” Manchin told a West Virginia radio host on Friday. “Everything they buy and consume for their daily life is a hardship for them. Can’t we wait to make sure we’re not doing anything to add to that?”
It was deja vu for climate hawks who watched a similar climate bill fail during the Obama administration in 2010, after which then-President Barack Obama had to rely on executive action.
Biden entered the Oval Office promising the boldest climate action of any president before him. But Manchin, who has invested heavily in the coal industry, has long been skeptical of clean energy. When he ran for Congress in 2010, Manchin cut a campaign ad in which he fired a shotgun at the Democrats’ cap-and-trade climate bill.
Manchin delivered his latest blow to the agenda this week, denying Democrats the chance to pass climate legislation for at least a few years.
“He killed this and he has to own this,” John Podesta, Obama’s climate adviser and founder of the Center for American Progress, told CNN.
Now Biden and Democrats “have to explain why — in a context where Democrats had at least nominal control of the White House, the House and the Senate — they couldn’t get the job done,” Podesta said.
CNN spoke with 11 lawmakers, congressional staffers and outside climate advocates who said they put much of the blame squarely on Manchin, a figure several sources described as difficult to pin down, often finding new excuses to delay action. A spokesman for Manchin declined to comment for this story.
Although Manchin insisted on Friday that he was still open to a deal on climate measures in September, sources inside and outside the Senate told CNN they were deeply skeptical after months of shifting rafters.
“This is bullshit,” an exasperated senior Democratic aide told CNN, adding that Manchin “doesn’t want to be held accountable.”
Others complained that even when the administration appeared to be focusing on climate early in Biden’s term, the outcome in Congress was eerily similar to Obama’s.
“When you have an ally in the White House, these issues become more painful when we give them away,” House Natural Resources Chairman Raul Grijalva told CNN. “Climate change was a priority, but inevitably when we get to that negotiating point, the issues of the environment, the climate crisis, the frontline communities and the issues of indigenous people come back, they become part of the trade.
“It’s a pattern that continues every time.”
“They will never say what they want”
Just days before Manchin torpedoed climate measures, Democrats felt confident they could strike a deal that would raise taxes on corporations and the wealthiest, lower prescription drug costs and tackle energy costs and the growing threat of climate change.
As negotiations reached a head in midweek, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made a series of deep concessions to try to woo Manchin, offering a significant reshaping of the bill to fit Manchin’s wish list, according to a Democratic source party informed about the negotiations – channeling the revenue for tax reform; impressive tax credits for electric vehicles; adding additional measures to encourage more oil and gas drilling.
Schumer made “concession after concession to at least get the best we can get,” Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota told CNN. “To have Senator Manchin withdraw from these good faith negotiations was stunning to me.”
Manchin’s approach to the latest negotiations is reminiscent of the failed Build Back Better negotiations in December, as well as previous negotiations over the Democrats’ earlier clean power standard, which he ended up removing from earlier versions of the bill. Two sources involved in those earlier talks with Manchin said the West Virginia senator and his team often proved impossible to pin down.
Instead of saying what Manchin wanted out of the deal, Manchin’s team instead often criticized what the other side was offering, the sources said.
“It’s like a word salad of why they don’t like him,” one source said. “They will never say what they want; they will attack what you have. [Manchin] he so desperately doesn’t want to seem like he’s on the hook — because he wants to leave. It’s just so slippery.”
A Democratic senator told CNN there was a connection in the failed talks — they are often on energy issues, and Manchin has made it clear that clean energy investments must be accompanied by more oil and gas drilling.
“I think that’s especially an issue in the energy negotiations,” the Democratic senator said, adding that Manchin chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Recruiting Executive Actions
Biden, who has pledged to halve the country’s global warming emissions as part of rejoining the Paris accord, vowed on Friday to take action even without the support of Congress.
“If the Senate does not act to address the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, I will take strong executive action to meet that moment,” Biden said in a statement.
Biden did not elaborate on the types of climate action he would take, but climate advocates told CNN that the administration should issue a combination of tough rules to cut emissions from power plants, vehicles and the oil and gas industry.
Advocates are expected to put even more pressure on the U.S. Interior Department to halt oil and gas leasing on federal lands, which has become a politically charged flashpoint among Republicans and Manchin.
With Manchin’s vote no longer attainable, advocates told CNN now is the time to dial up executive action and federal regulations to 100.
“There is no excuse now,” Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, told CNN. “What I’m looking for is a coordinated agency-wide response at the executive level that uses every tool and agency at its disposal to address the climate crisis.”
John Larsen, a climate expert and partner at the nonpartisan think tank Rhodium Group, said Biden still has time to differentiate himself from Obama’s climate legacy by continuing to increase the use of clean energy and reduce the use of fossil fuels .
“When [the 2010 bill] disappeared, there was no discussion or action on climate after that until after the 2012 election,” Larsen said. “If you repeat that part of history again, we’ll have five years after 2030.”
Rather, Podesta told CNN, the failure of climate legislation in Congress will hurt Biden and the United States at the next round of international climate talks this November in Egypt.
“I think it weakens the U.S.,” Podesta said. “I think that [US Climate Envoy] John Kerry has done a great job, but at the end of the day you have to demonstrate that you can deliver on your commitments, and that’s where the strength of a man comes from.”
Add Comment