Manchin vows ‘unrelenting fight’ with Biden on Inflation Reduction Act’s one-year anniversary
David Sivak
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Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is walking a delicate line on the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill he helped author but has since threatened to join Republicans in repealing.
The West Virginia senator, like other Democrats marking the anniversary, hailed the bill as “one of the most historic pieces of legislation passed in decades,” noting its $35 cap on insulin for seniors and funding for a black lung disability trust. Republicans, universally opposed to its passage, had played “political games” with a bill geared toward low- and middle-income families, he said.
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But Manchin bristled at the way its energy provisions have been implemented by the Biden administration, vowing to oppose what he sees as the president’s “radical climate agenda.
“Make no mistake, the IRA is exactly the kind of legislation that in normal political times both political parties would proudly embrace because it is about putting the interests of Americans and West Virginians first,” he said in a Wednesday statement. “Going forward I will push back on those who seek to undermine this significant legislation for their respective political agenda, and that begins with my unrelenting fight against the Biden administration’s efforts to implement the IRA as a radical climate agenda instead of implementing the IRA that was passed into law.”
Manchin was the decisive vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping tax, climate, and healthcare bill that Democrats passed along party lines last summer. The senator, a conservative Democrat and perennial thorn in President Joe Biden’s side, joined Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) in tanking the Build Back Better plan, the president’s signature policy bill, but eventually agreed to support the pared-down Inflation Reduction Act in exchange for a deal on energy permitting reform.
Washington greenlighted the completion of West Virginia’s Mountain Valley Pipeline earlier this year as a reward for his vote, but Manchin has waged a protracted fight with Biden over what he says is the administration’s preference for clean energy over the “all-of-the-above” energy strategy prescribed by the law.
Manchin, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has since May placed a hold on all Environmental Protection Agency nominees over a Biden rule on power plant emissions and declined an invitation to attend a White House event celebrating the law’s passage.
The criticism has not shielded Manchin from attacks over his “yes” vote. The McConnell-aligned nonprofit organization One Nation launched a six-figure ad buy on Wednesday over the “pivotal role” he played in “writing President Biden’s green energy scheme.”
Manchin, considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in 2024, has not said whether he will run for another term in the Senate and has left the door open to challenging Biden for president as a third-party candidate.
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Earlier this month, he floated the possibility of leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent, denouncing the extremes on both sides of the aisle.
“This country needs leadership and my hope is that elected leaders in both parties and in the White House put down their political swords, stop playing to the ideological extremes, and focus on the very goal of this legislation — to help our hard-working families and build a better, stronger, and more secure nation for this generation and the next,” he said on Wednesday.