IN THE WRONG PARTY
Manchin: If You Want to Save the Planet, Elect More Progressives in 2022
'I'M NOT A LIBERAL, I NEVER HAVE BEEN'
The West Virginia senator's suggestion came as he declared a topline figure of $1.5 trillion for Democrats' reconciliation bill.
A flotilla of activists from Center for Popular Democracy, CASA, and Greenpeace USA take to kayaks and electric boats to demonstrate near Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) houseboat in the Washington, D.C. Wharf to demand that he support the Build Back Better Act. (Photo: Sarah Silbiger/Greenpeace)
September 30, 2021
Sen. Joe Manchin said Thursday that securing sweeping climate legislation to safeguard the planet for future generations requires electing more progressives—unlike him—in 2022.
The corporate Democrat's assertion came as he announced to a crowd of reporters that his topline number for the broad reconciliation bill is $1.5 trillion—a fraction of the $3.5 trillion demanded by progressive lawmakers for the 10-year Build Back Better plan that includes investments to strengthen the safety net and tackle the climate emergency.
Manchin (D-W.Va.), the Senate's top recipient of fossil fuel industry cash, has pushed his party to water down the reconciliation bill, and he and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have obstructed the package's passage.
The $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill, favored by Manchin and criticized by climate campaigners, is facing a tentative vote in the House on Thursday. But progressives have continued to demand congressional passage of the broader reconcilation bill first, before the bipartisan bill faces a vote.
Although Manchin said that his aim is to "put our children at the front end" with the proposed legislation, he told reporters Thursday that, with regard to progressive priorties included in the reconcilation bill, "the other things they want to do maybe we can do at another time."
To progressives opposed to gutting parts of the reconciliation bill's social and climate investments, Manchin said, "Basically take whatever we aren't able to come to agreement with today and take that on the campaign trail next year and I'm sure that you'll get liberal, progressive Democrats with what they say they want."
"I've never been a liberal in any way," said Manchin, adding that "all we need to do I guess for them to get theirs... is elect more liberals."
Polling has shown the Build Back Better plan is popular nationwide—and both political commentators and progressive activists have warned that not passing the full package could negatively impact Democrats at the ballot box next year.
Activists with Center for Popular Democracy, CASA, and Greenpeace USA targeted Manchin this week over his obstruction of the reconcilation bill, bringing a "flotilla" of kayaks near the senator's yacht in Washington, D.C.
"Congress cannot fall for Big Oil's false choice between a healthy economy and a healthy planet. The truth is with fossil fuels we get neither," said John Noël, a senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace USA.
"Climate-fueled disasters cost the global economy $150 billion in 2019. Fossil fuels killed 8.7 million people globally in 2018," he added, calling the Build Back Better Act "a prime opportunity to kickstart a clean energy future and stop sending billions of our tax dollars to fossil fuel companies."
The corporate Democrat's assertion came as he announced to a crowd of reporters that his topline number for the broad reconciliation bill is $1.5 trillion—a fraction of the $3.5 trillion demanded by progressive lawmakers for the 10-year Build Back Better plan that includes investments to strengthen the safety net and tackle the climate emergency.
Manchin (D-W.Va.), the Senate's top recipient of fossil fuel industry cash, has pushed his party to water down the reconciliation bill, and he and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have obstructed the package's passage.
The $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill, favored by Manchin and criticized by climate campaigners, is facing a tentative vote in the House on Thursday. But progressives have continued to demand congressional passage of the broader reconcilation bill first, before the bipartisan bill faces a vote.
Although Manchin said that his aim is to "put our children at the front end" with the proposed legislation, he told reporters Thursday that, with regard to progressive priorties included in the reconcilation bill, "the other things they want to do maybe we can do at another time."
To progressives opposed to gutting parts of the reconciliation bill's social and climate investments, Manchin said, "Basically take whatever we aren't able to come to agreement with today and take that on the campaign trail next year and I'm sure that you'll get liberal, progressive Democrats with what they say they want."
"I've never been a liberal in any way," said Manchin, adding that "all we need to do I guess for them to get theirs... is elect more liberals."
Polling has shown the Build Back Better plan is popular nationwide—and both political commentators and progressive activists have warned that not passing the full package could negatively impact Democrats at the ballot box next year.
Activists with Center for Popular Democracy, CASA, and Greenpeace USA targeted Manchin this week over his obstruction of the reconcilation bill, bringing a "flotilla" of kayaks near the senator's yacht in Washington, D.C.
"Congress cannot fall for Big Oil's false choice between a healthy economy and a healthy planet. The truth is with fossil fuels we get neither," said John Noël, a senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace USA.
"Climate-fueled disasters cost the global economy $150 billion in 2019. Fossil fuels killed 8.7 million people globally in 2018," he added, calling the Build Back Better Act "a prime opportunity to kickstart a clean energy future and stop sending billions of our tax dollars to fossil fuel companies."
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Manchin Admits Getting His Bill Passed and Then Tanking Progressive Package Was Always the Plan
"Thank god," said one observer, that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is "holding the line on the original deal otherwise we'd be toast on child care, climate, housing, prescription drugs, and everything else."
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) arrives for a bipartisan meeting on infrastructure legislation at the U.S. Capitol on July 13, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Win McNamee via Getty Images)
KENNY STANCIL
Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, a progressive advocacy group, expressed gratitude for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which has vowed to secure President Joe Biden's entire domestic policy agenda by voting down the bipartisan physical infrastructure bill until Congress passes the popular Build Back Better Act—a broader social infrastructure package that would fund climate action and anti-poverty measures by raising taxes on corporations and the rich—through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process.
It remains unclear whether Pelosi still plans to bring the BIF to a vote on Thursday, but progressives' pledge to block the bipartisan bill until it is relinked with the reconciliation package is consistent with the deal that Democratic Party leaders outlined months ago to keep both pieces of legislation connected and advance them together.
In June, Pelosi said that the House would not take up either piece of legislation until the Senate passed both. Last month, she successfully got Gottheimer and the other holdouts to vote for the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint. In order to secure their support, however, Pelosi agreed to hold a late-September vote on the Senate-passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, as the BIF is also known.
Pelosi's decision on Monday to schedule a vote on the bipartisan bill even though the reconciliation package is not yet ready, let alone approved—a reversal of her earlier promise to not decouple the two pieces of legislation—has been sharply rebuked by progressives in the House as well as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
As Sanders said Tuesday, "If the bipartisan infrastructure bill is passed on its own on Thursday, this will be in violation of an agreement that was reached within the Democratic Caucus in Congress."
"More importantly," Sanders warned, "it will end all leverage that we have to pass a major reconciliation bill."
"That means there will be no serious effort to address the long-neglected crises facing the working families of our country, the children, the elderly, the sick, and the poor," he added. "It also means that Congress will continue to ignore the existential threat to our country and planet with regard to climate change."
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
"Thank god," said one observer, that the Congressional Progressive Caucus is "holding the line on the original deal otherwise we'd be toast on child care, climate, housing, prescription drugs, and everything else."
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) arrives for a bipartisan meeting on infrastructure legislation at the U.S. Capitol on July 13, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Win McNamee via Getty Images)
KENNY STANCIL
September 30, 2021
Sen. Joe Manchin admitted Thursday, ahead of a scheduled House vote on the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill, that it had been corporate Democrats' plan all along to first secure passage of their fossil fuel-friendly legislation and then undermine the party's more ambitious reconciliation package that proposes investing up to $3.5 trillion over a decade in clean energy and the social safety net.
The conservative West Virginia Democrat told reporters Thursday that on July 28, he secured a signed agreement (pdf) from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) outlining his conditions for voting on the final reconciliation bill.
A spokesperson for Schumer, meanwhile, told Politico that "Schumer never agreed to any of the conditions Sen. Manchin laid out; he merely acknowledged where Sen. Manchin was on the subject at the time."
In addition to demanding a topline figure no higher than $1.5 trillion, something he reiterated on Thursday, Manchin said in July that he wanted to delay debate on the reconciliation package until October 1.
Meanwhile, a small group of corporate-funded House Democrats—led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.) and supported by Manchin and fellow right-wing Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.)—in August pressured Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to bring the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF) to the floor by September 27 in exchange for their votes on the $3.5 trillion budget resolution that enabled lawmakers to draft the Build Back Better Act, as the reconciliation package has since been named.
Critics were quick to point out the significance of Manchin's revelation.
"It sure feeds the idea that their goal is to pass BIF then bail on reconciliation," noted former Senate staffer Adam Jentleson, now executive director of the Battle Born Collective, a progressive messaging firm.
Sen. Joe Manchin admitted Thursday, ahead of a scheduled House vote on the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill, that it had been corporate Democrats' plan all along to first secure passage of their fossil fuel-friendly legislation and then undermine the party's more ambitious reconciliation package that proposes investing up to $3.5 trillion over a decade in clean energy and the social safety net.
The conservative West Virginia Democrat told reporters Thursday that on July 28, he secured a signed agreement (pdf) from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) outlining his conditions for voting on the final reconciliation bill.
A spokesperson for Schumer, meanwhile, told Politico that "Schumer never agreed to any of the conditions Sen. Manchin laid out; he merely acknowledged where Sen. Manchin was on the subject at the time."
In addition to demanding a topline figure no higher than $1.5 trillion, something he reiterated on Thursday, Manchin said in July that he wanted to delay debate on the reconciliation package until October 1.
Meanwhile, a small group of corporate-funded House Democrats—led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.) and supported by Manchin and fellow right-wing Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.)—in August pressured Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to bring the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF) to the floor by September 27 in exchange for their votes on the $3.5 trillion budget resolution that enabled lawmakers to draft the Build Back Better Act, as the reconciliation package has since been named.
Critics were quick to point out the significance of Manchin's revelation.
"It sure feeds the idea that their goal is to pass BIF then bail on reconciliation," noted former Senate staffer Adam Jentleson, now executive director of the Battle Born Collective, a progressive messaging firm.
Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, a progressive advocacy group, expressed gratitude for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which has vowed to secure President Joe Biden's entire domestic policy agenda by voting down the bipartisan physical infrastructure bill until Congress passes the popular Build Back Better Act—a broader social infrastructure package that would fund climate action and anti-poverty measures by raising taxes on corporations and the rich—through the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process.
It remains unclear whether Pelosi still plans to bring the BIF to a vote on Thursday, but progressives' pledge to block the bipartisan bill until it is relinked with the reconciliation package is consistent with the deal that Democratic Party leaders outlined months ago to keep both pieces of legislation connected and advance them together.
In June, Pelosi said that the House would not take up either piece of legislation until the Senate passed both. Last month, she successfully got Gottheimer and the other holdouts to vote for the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint. In order to secure their support, however, Pelosi agreed to hold a late-September vote on the Senate-passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, as the BIF is also known.
Pelosi's decision on Monday to schedule a vote on the bipartisan bill even though the reconciliation package is not yet ready, let alone approved—a reversal of her earlier promise to not decouple the two pieces of legislation—has been sharply rebuked by progressives in the House as well as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
As Sanders said Tuesday, "If the bipartisan infrastructure bill is passed on its own on Thursday, this will be in violation of an agreement that was reached within the Democratic Caucus in Congress."
"More importantly," Sanders warned, "it will end all leverage that we have to pass a major reconciliation bill."
"That means there will be no serious effort to address the long-neglected crises facing the working families of our country, the children, the elderly, the sick, and the poor," he added. "It also means that Congress will continue to ignore the existential threat to our country and planet with regard to climate change."
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
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