“Energy workers,” a union leader told us, “are politically homeless.” Here’s why the IRA legislation didn’t do much to change things.
November 24, 2024
Source: Jacobin
Wikimedia Commons
Last June I drove to Homer City, Pennsylvania, to talk to Aric Baker, the head of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 459. The Homer City Generating Station, Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant, was set to close before the July 4 holiday. One hundred of his union members would soon be out of work; the indirect costs of the closure would be larger. Homer City, a small town in western Pennsylvania already struggling since the closure of surrounding coal mines decades earlier, would suffer another blow.
Although the Inflation Reduction Action (IRA) was passed a year earlier and incentivized investments in “energy communities” like Homer City, the promise of future green investments was little consolation to union workers who needed a new job in two weeks. The IRA had no direct assistance to workers displaced by the energy transition, leaving Local 459 members to search for other jobs or take unemployment. With few comparable jobs in the region, many left the state altogether. As for green energy, Baker observed that the solar plant down the road was advertising $15 per hour wages at the local job fair. His members made at least $100,000 a year.
The union leader was angry and conflicted: he saw that Republicans were anti-union and that Donald Trump’s promise to “dig more coal” had not panned out. He understood that coal was being undermined by natural gas and “wasn’t the fuel of the future.” But he also felt deserted by Democrats, who appeared to have little consideration for the workers who had spent decades working night shifts and weekends to keep the lights on for the rest of America. “Energy workers,” he told me, “are politically homeless.”
Trump’s resounding victory this month underscores that many such workers have found a new home. When we spoke again shortly after the election, Baker acknowledged almost his whole membership voted for Trump, along with about 70 percent of Indiana County. Energy workers are part of the larger migration of blue-collar workers — especially from regions ravaged by deindustrialization — to the Trump camp.
The story of Homer City provides some insight into why the IRA, the signature legislative accomplishment of the Biden administration, failed to arrest this slide. It underscores the missed opportunity that was Joe Biden’s first two years in office, and it illuminates what Democrats will have to do better if they hope to ever regain mass working-class support.
The Green New Deal
First, the missed opportunity. Recall that Democrats took office in 2020 with control — albeit slim — of both houses and a tremendous upswell of enthusiasm around what its progressive flank called the Green New Deal (GND). The GND represented a profound break from traditional environmentalism: instead of calling for sacrifice and doing with less, the GND promised more to the working class. It would be a positive program coupling climate action with redistribution “from the 1% to the 99%.” It would mean investment in green jobs — like those promised for Homer City — but they would be high-paying union jobs.
Crucially, there would be a slew of “Just Transition” policies that would deal directly with the type of situation that Local 459 was facing as the country transitioned from fossil fuels to renewables. These would go beyond the usual proposals for vocational training. For younger workers, the GND would include things like guaranteed wage replacements: the government making up the pay difference, if it existed, between old fossil fuel jobs and new jobs for a transitional period. Older workers could be offered early retirement with full pay and pension.
Fiscally, economists calculated, this was entirely feasible. Politically, it need not be seen as welfare: call it the “Energy Veterans Bill” to honor the hard work and sacrifices borne by the generations of workers, such as those in Homer City, who have powered the country. And for the majority of people not lucky enough to have union jobs, there would be a slew of material investments that would directly improve people’s lives: child tax credits, universal health care, paid family leave, cheap clean electricity, and more.Instead of calling for sacrifice and doing with less, the Green New Deal promised more to the working class.
Nancy Pelosi famously dismissed the “green dream, or whatever they call it,” and establishment Democrats balked at the price tag of this “progressive wish list.” Many today undoubtedly consider it unrealistic — but consider the fact that a major downpayment on this vision was one Senate vote away from passing.
From Build Back Better to the Inflation Reduction Act
Yes, I am talking about the Build Back Better (BBB) bill, the far more expansive precursor to what eventually became the IRA. With pressure from the progressive fraction of the party, including Bernie Sanders and the Squad from within Congress, Biden had embraced what would have been the most ambitious social policy since the War on Poverty.
In addition to accelerating the energy transition, BBB would have dramatically improved the lives of most working people. It would have made permanent the pandemic-era child tax credit expansion, which during its year of existence generated a record 30 percent reduction in child poverty (its expiration, in turn, produced a record increase in child poverty). It would have ensured that Americans making less than $300,000 would pay no more than 7 percent of their income on childcare (imagine that after the pandemic). It would have reduced health care premiums under the Affordable Care Act, expanded Medicaid coverage, and covered home health care. It would have made the most significant investment in affordable housing in US history. It would have provided universal paid family and medical leave. It would have made community college free. It had stringent labor standards for clean energy investments.
There was one major weakness in BBB: it neglected Just Transition policies that would have most directly dealt with the type of pain being experienced by energy workers in Homer City. Otherwise, the draft bill reflected the core premise of the Green New Deal: it coupled urgently needed climate action with direct material benefits to the working class that, its proponents hoped, would help build an enduring progressive political coalition.
We are by now familiar with its fate. With only the narrowest control of the Senate, Democrats needed the vote of West Virginia senator Joe Manchin. Unhappy with all the “handouts” — which would have dramatically improved countless lives in his own state — he vetoed almost all of it and walked away. It seemed that the Democrats would get nothing for their efforts until Manchin came back to the table and hammered out the IRA with Chuck Schumer. Gone were the expansive social programs of the BBB, as well as any “sticks” to hasten the transition from fossil fuels. What remained instead were tax breaks for all kinds of green energy and green manufacturing investments, as well as plenty for the fossil fuel industry (especially in carbon capture). Liberals celebrated the United States’ “historic” climate legislation, which was certainly the centerpiece of Biden’s domestic agenda.
The Shortcomings of Elite Climate Policy
In terms of incentivizing investment, the IRA was indeed a success: in just the two years since its passage, the IRA has incentivized approximately $89 billion of investment into green energy and manufacturing. Over the same period, investment in clean manufacturing quadrupled. Investment in renewable energy production and industrial decarbonization increased by 43%. Massive battery plants and electric vehicle (EV) factories are under construction, many in red states.The IRA did so little politically for the Democrats is because it did so little for the working class.
So why did none of this make any electoral difference for the Democrats? Why did Kamala Harris hardly even mention the IRA — the Biden administration’s largest legislative achievement — on the campaign trail? One can argue that Harriss wanted to sidestep “anti-green” attacks and avoid reminding voters of inflation which, after Manchin’s rebranding, the IRA was ostensibly meant to counteract. But this begs the question of why the IRA’s political strengths did not outweigh these vulnerabilities.
The answer is that the IRA’s direct beneficiaries were companies, not voters. When Manchin was done with it, every provision of Build Back Better that would have put money directly into the pockets of working-class Americans was gone. In their place were tax credits for corporations, green or otherwise (fossil fuel companies also received massive subsidies). The IRA was green industrial policy, rather than a Green New Deal.
It is undoubtedly true that IRA tax breaks enabled investments that ultimately create jobs. Over time, these might even change the economic base of select regions. And that could, ultimately, build political support for the energy transition. But that is a long game, as Biden officials themselves acknowledged.
As the expanding solar manufacturing plant in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Georgia district underscores, a thousand jobs at a green manufacturing site is great and may be political insurance for the IRA — but it’s not going to change the political affiliations of a region or state. An EV factory under construction may be just one more job site for the itinerant tradesman. A battery plant employing one thousand people in Weirton, West Virginia, is fantastic, but not enough to make up for the many thousands that used to work in the town’s now-shuttered steel plant, much less the loss of fifty thousand coal jobs in the state since the 1970s (for which the coal industry has successfully blamed Democrats and the Environmental Protection Agency). Even when green investments do line up with the phase-out of gray industries, they often don’t provide jobs of equivalent quality. Baker’s observation about the relatively low wages offered by the nearby solar plant is borne out by national data: right now, jobs in renewables are on average lower paying than those in fossil fuels.
In sum, the IRA did so little politically for the Democrats because it did so little for the working class. That the Biden administration’s two years of congressional control yielded so little is a tragedy of historic proportions. Instead of unleashing a virtuous cycle where widespread material gains generate political coalitions for even bigger gains, the Democrats settled for elite climate and industrial policy that offered no alternative to Trump’s channeling of working-class discontent into xenophobia.
It would be tempting to just blame Manchin, who certainly deserves infamy for ensuring that Democrats had almost nothing to show for their four years in office. But one thing that the senator said was certainly true: if progressives want something like a Green New Deal, they need to elect more people like themselves into office.
It is hard to know when that will happen. Given the dysfunction and elite capture of the Democratic Party, it would only come about through strong social movement pressure from below. But if this resounding rejection of the Democrats almost everywhere outside of cities makes one thing clear, it is that delivering direct material benefits to the working class — in places like Homer City — must return to the center of the Democratic agenda if they are to have a prayer of counteracting Trump’s fascistic channeling of working-class discontent. As Aric Baker put it, “If the Democrats don’t get their heads out of their ass and start paying attention to what was thrown in their face with this election, there’s no turning back. We’re just going to get run over by the Republican agenda.” If and when their heads emerge, the Democrats will need to deliver in ways that the IRA did not.
Michael Levien is an associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, where he is also affiliated with the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute. He is writing a book on the carbon capture boom in Louisiana.
Wikimedia Commons
Last June I drove to Homer City, Pennsylvania, to talk to Aric Baker, the head of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 459. The Homer City Generating Station, Pennsylvania’s largest coal-fired power plant, was set to close before the July 4 holiday. One hundred of his union members would soon be out of work; the indirect costs of the closure would be larger. Homer City, a small town in western Pennsylvania already struggling since the closure of surrounding coal mines decades earlier, would suffer another blow.
Although the Inflation Reduction Action (IRA) was passed a year earlier and incentivized investments in “energy communities” like Homer City, the promise of future green investments was little consolation to union workers who needed a new job in two weeks. The IRA had no direct assistance to workers displaced by the energy transition, leaving Local 459 members to search for other jobs or take unemployment. With few comparable jobs in the region, many left the state altogether. As for green energy, Baker observed that the solar plant down the road was advertising $15 per hour wages at the local job fair. His members made at least $100,000 a year.
The union leader was angry and conflicted: he saw that Republicans were anti-union and that Donald Trump’s promise to “dig more coal” had not panned out. He understood that coal was being undermined by natural gas and “wasn’t the fuel of the future.” But he also felt deserted by Democrats, who appeared to have little consideration for the workers who had spent decades working night shifts and weekends to keep the lights on for the rest of America. “Energy workers,” he told me, “are politically homeless.”
Trump’s resounding victory this month underscores that many such workers have found a new home. When we spoke again shortly after the election, Baker acknowledged almost his whole membership voted for Trump, along with about 70 percent of Indiana County. Energy workers are part of the larger migration of blue-collar workers — especially from regions ravaged by deindustrialization — to the Trump camp.
The story of Homer City provides some insight into why the IRA, the signature legislative accomplishment of the Biden administration, failed to arrest this slide. It underscores the missed opportunity that was Joe Biden’s first two years in office, and it illuminates what Democrats will have to do better if they hope to ever regain mass working-class support.
The Green New Deal
First, the missed opportunity. Recall that Democrats took office in 2020 with control — albeit slim — of both houses and a tremendous upswell of enthusiasm around what its progressive flank called the Green New Deal (GND). The GND represented a profound break from traditional environmentalism: instead of calling for sacrifice and doing with less, the GND promised more to the working class. It would be a positive program coupling climate action with redistribution “from the 1% to the 99%.” It would mean investment in green jobs — like those promised for Homer City — but they would be high-paying union jobs.
Crucially, there would be a slew of “Just Transition” policies that would deal directly with the type of situation that Local 459 was facing as the country transitioned from fossil fuels to renewables. These would go beyond the usual proposals for vocational training. For younger workers, the GND would include things like guaranteed wage replacements: the government making up the pay difference, if it existed, between old fossil fuel jobs and new jobs for a transitional period. Older workers could be offered early retirement with full pay and pension.
Fiscally, economists calculated, this was entirely feasible. Politically, it need not be seen as welfare: call it the “Energy Veterans Bill” to honor the hard work and sacrifices borne by the generations of workers, such as those in Homer City, who have powered the country. And for the majority of people not lucky enough to have union jobs, there would be a slew of material investments that would directly improve people’s lives: child tax credits, universal health care, paid family leave, cheap clean electricity, and more.Instead of calling for sacrifice and doing with less, the Green New Deal promised more to the working class.
Nancy Pelosi famously dismissed the “green dream, or whatever they call it,” and establishment Democrats balked at the price tag of this “progressive wish list.” Many today undoubtedly consider it unrealistic — but consider the fact that a major downpayment on this vision was one Senate vote away from passing.
From Build Back Better to the Inflation Reduction Act
Yes, I am talking about the Build Back Better (BBB) bill, the far more expansive precursor to what eventually became the IRA. With pressure from the progressive fraction of the party, including Bernie Sanders and the Squad from within Congress, Biden had embraced what would have been the most ambitious social policy since the War on Poverty.
In addition to accelerating the energy transition, BBB would have dramatically improved the lives of most working people. It would have made permanent the pandemic-era child tax credit expansion, which during its year of existence generated a record 30 percent reduction in child poverty (its expiration, in turn, produced a record increase in child poverty). It would have ensured that Americans making less than $300,000 would pay no more than 7 percent of their income on childcare (imagine that after the pandemic). It would have reduced health care premiums under the Affordable Care Act, expanded Medicaid coverage, and covered home health care. It would have made the most significant investment in affordable housing in US history. It would have provided universal paid family and medical leave. It would have made community college free. It had stringent labor standards for clean energy investments.
There was one major weakness in BBB: it neglected Just Transition policies that would have most directly dealt with the type of pain being experienced by energy workers in Homer City. Otherwise, the draft bill reflected the core premise of the Green New Deal: it coupled urgently needed climate action with direct material benefits to the working class that, its proponents hoped, would help build an enduring progressive political coalition.
We are by now familiar with its fate. With only the narrowest control of the Senate, Democrats needed the vote of West Virginia senator Joe Manchin. Unhappy with all the “handouts” — which would have dramatically improved countless lives in his own state — he vetoed almost all of it and walked away. It seemed that the Democrats would get nothing for their efforts until Manchin came back to the table and hammered out the IRA with Chuck Schumer. Gone were the expansive social programs of the BBB, as well as any “sticks” to hasten the transition from fossil fuels. What remained instead were tax breaks for all kinds of green energy and green manufacturing investments, as well as plenty for the fossil fuel industry (especially in carbon capture). Liberals celebrated the United States’ “historic” climate legislation, which was certainly the centerpiece of Biden’s domestic agenda.
The Shortcomings of Elite Climate Policy
In terms of incentivizing investment, the IRA was indeed a success: in just the two years since its passage, the IRA has incentivized approximately $89 billion of investment into green energy and manufacturing. Over the same period, investment in clean manufacturing quadrupled. Investment in renewable energy production and industrial decarbonization increased by 43%. Massive battery plants and electric vehicle (EV) factories are under construction, many in red states.The IRA did so little politically for the Democrats is because it did so little for the working class.
So why did none of this make any electoral difference for the Democrats? Why did Kamala Harris hardly even mention the IRA — the Biden administration’s largest legislative achievement — on the campaign trail? One can argue that Harriss wanted to sidestep “anti-green” attacks and avoid reminding voters of inflation which, after Manchin’s rebranding, the IRA was ostensibly meant to counteract. But this begs the question of why the IRA’s political strengths did not outweigh these vulnerabilities.
The answer is that the IRA’s direct beneficiaries were companies, not voters. When Manchin was done with it, every provision of Build Back Better that would have put money directly into the pockets of working-class Americans was gone. In their place were tax credits for corporations, green or otherwise (fossil fuel companies also received massive subsidies). The IRA was green industrial policy, rather than a Green New Deal.
It is undoubtedly true that IRA tax breaks enabled investments that ultimately create jobs. Over time, these might even change the economic base of select regions. And that could, ultimately, build political support for the energy transition. But that is a long game, as Biden officials themselves acknowledged.
As the expanding solar manufacturing plant in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Georgia district underscores, a thousand jobs at a green manufacturing site is great and may be political insurance for the IRA — but it’s not going to change the political affiliations of a region or state. An EV factory under construction may be just one more job site for the itinerant tradesman. A battery plant employing one thousand people in Weirton, West Virginia, is fantastic, but not enough to make up for the many thousands that used to work in the town’s now-shuttered steel plant, much less the loss of fifty thousand coal jobs in the state since the 1970s (for which the coal industry has successfully blamed Democrats and the Environmental Protection Agency). Even when green investments do line up with the phase-out of gray industries, they often don’t provide jobs of equivalent quality. Baker’s observation about the relatively low wages offered by the nearby solar plant is borne out by national data: right now, jobs in renewables are on average lower paying than those in fossil fuels.
In sum, the IRA did so little politically for the Democrats because it did so little for the working class. That the Biden administration’s two years of congressional control yielded so little is a tragedy of historic proportions. Instead of unleashing a virtuous cycle where widespread material gains generate political coalitions for even bigger gains, the Democrats settled for elite climate and industrial policy that offered no alternative to Trump’s channeling of working-class discontent into xenophobia.
It would be tempting to just blame Manchin, who certainly deserves infamy for ensuring that Democrats had almost nothing to show for their four years in office. But one thing that the senator said was certainly true: if progressives want something like a Green New Deal, they need to elect more people like themselves into office.
It is hard to know when that will happen. Given the dysfunction and elite capture of the Democratic Party, it would only come about through strong social movement pressure from below. But if this resounding rejection of the Democrats almost everywhere outside of cities makes one thing clear, it is that delivering direct material benefits to the working class — in places like Homer City — must return to the center of the Democratic agenda if they are to have a prayer of counteracting Trump’s fascistic channeling of working-class discontent. As Aric Baker put it, “If the Democrats don’t get their heads out of their ass and start paying attention to what was thrown in their face with this election, there’s no turning back. We’re just going to get run over by the Republican agenda.” If and when their heads emerge, the Democrats will need to deliver in ways that the IRA did not.
Michael Levien is an associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, where he is also affiliated with the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute. He is writing a book on the carbon capture boom in Louisiana.
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