Joe and Chuck's Excellent Adventure
A View from West Virginia of the climactic Inflation Reduction Act | Aug. 10, 2022
Score one — a big one, with some caveats — for Joe Manchin. And planet Earth.
The following article is reprinted from the August 2022 edition of my other website, WestVirginiaVille.com
BY DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO | August 9, 2022
You could compose a colorful graduate thesis on the varieties of astonishment, pleasure, and self-repudiation expressed by members of the chattering class after the surprise commando raid Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin executed recently, reclaiming a portion of the territory lost by the demise of the Biden Administration’s original Build Back Better bill.
The Inflation Reduction Act, just passed out of the Senate this week, is a far slimmer bill than BBB. But it remains a significant and genuinely historic one. The IRA rightfully earns the headline Talking Points Memo awarded it, summing it up as a ‘Sweeping Climate, Health Care And Tax Bill, while calling it “a huge step forward on the party’s agenda after more than a year of halting negotiations“:
The bill dedicates more than $300 billion to green energy incentives and climate spending, putting the U.S. on course to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. It also extends Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years, avoiding a coverage-loss calamity, and lets Medicare negotiate down some prescription drug prices.
Named the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the bill would also raise more than $700 billion through provisions including a 15 percent minimum corporate tax on businesses making $1 billion or more, beefing up IRS enforcement of tax evaders, and a tax on stock buybacks. It would reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Talking Points Memo: “Democrats’ Sweeping Climate, Health Care And Tax Bill Has Passed The Senate”
What was lost
That line in TPM’s piece — “after more than a year of halting negotiations” — is doing a lot of work here. WestVirginiaVille joined its own tiny voice in a Mormon Tabernacle Choir of international condemnation for the depth charges dropped by West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, while blowing up the Biden Administration’s Build Back Better dreams for transformative social and climate legislation. If BBB were a car sitting overnight in a bad neighborhood, come upon by Manchin and his monkey wrenching partner Kyrsten Sinema, by dawn that car sat on blocks, its wheels, engine, and stereo gone into the night.
And yet … We now have what is being rightly hailed as the most significant climate bill ever passed.
What was stripped from the original bill is significant. As Paul Krugman noted in a Twitter thread: “What was lost was a lot of social spending — child tax credits, pre-K, and more. These losses are tragic: we will be a poorer, less just society than we could have been (and might yet become if Democrats pull an upset in November).”
But what remains is … well, let’s let Krugman say it:
For non-social media users, BFD is being used in its second iteration seen here at the All Acronyms explainer site …
Wonderment, stupefaction and miracles
The Inflation Reduction Act still needs to be passed by the House of Representative, a mostly foregone conclusion (one prays). As the Senate version rolled toward the finish line, social media rippled with astonishment. Or pick your own synonym: Wonderment? Stupefaction? Ryan Grim’s substack was emblematic: “A Manchin Miracle?”
There were mea culpas, too, for some of us who laid down a scorched earth trail of criticism of Manchin and his BBB blocking crew of two, not to mention the once seemingly hapless Senate Democratic majordomo Chuck Schumer:
So, then, am I sitting down to the same menu of Crow a la Steak Sauce as Nichols? I, who devoted an entire edition of WestVirginiaVille to the theme of “Is Joe Manchin the Anti-Byrd?”, slamming his failure to stand with the grand ambitions of D.C.’s other notable Joe. In the aftermath of what appeared to be Manchin’s final and not-so-merciful coup de grace to BBB, we also published: “10 Things to Say About Joe Manchin After He Kills Off Biden’s Climate Initiatives for Good.”
In short, I will decline that dinner invitation, but will quickly express sincere, if qualified, gratitude to Senator Manchin. The precise point of all of that coverage was to encourage the arrival of just this cavalry, as the doomsday clock wound down on a possible last-ditch Democratic effort on climate legislation for many years to come.
In a Twitter comment I made to Nichol’s ‘A1 sauce’ tweet, I wrote:
“I feel that. On the other hand, all the dumping — and on Manchin, too — may have helped focus their attention on the finish line.”
Good cops, bad cops
The chairman was finally in — on climate legislation. | WestVirginiaVille.com colorized photo-illustration
In WestVirginiaVille’s own small way, we have deliberately played a sort of ‘bad cop‘ to the tens of thousands of ‘good cop‘ efforts within West Virginia. That is to say, the countless worthy phone calls, op-eds, and endless encouragements to Joe Manchin (‘C’mon. Joe!!!‘), to do the right thing by standing up for the Biden Administration’s progressive aims.
I have devoted my own chunk of time to such efforts. For instance, conceiving and executive producing the music video “Hey Joe” (set to “Hey Jude”), featuring “Mountain Stage” band leader Ron Sowell and a chorus of West Virginians, harmonically urging Manchin to support Build Back Better.
It is hard to know the exact stew of motivations that lurk beneath the suitcoat and tie of Joe Manchin. Yet it seems to me just as possible that the ‘bad cop’ messaging when Build Back Better ground to a halt — and a global chorus of criticism and ‘You want THIS to be your legacy?!’ rained upon his head — may have had as much resonance as all those ‘good cop’ entreaties. (Or did they work in tandem?)
Beyond such questions, attention must be paid to the details of what deals were struck to finally bring Manchin back to the table. This includes continued wariness for the senator’s ongoing proselytizing, repping, and profiting from a fossil fuel industry fast becoming a fossil as the climate crisis fast becomes existential.
My former colleague Ken Ward’s investigative site, Mountain State Spotlight, co-produced with Pro Publica an Aug. 5, 2022 story by Ken and Alexa Beyer, titled: “Joe Manchin’s price for supporting the climate change bill: a natural gas pipeline in West Virginia.”
And the New York Times came out this week with a story about how those donors win in the new IRA climate deal:
Mr. Manchin’s recent surprise agreement to back the Biden administration’s historic climate legislation came about in part because the senator was promised something in return: not only support for the pipeline in his home state, but also expedited approval for pipelines and other infrastructure nationwide, as part of a wider set of concessions to fossil fuels … It was a big win for a pipeline industry that, in recent years, has quietly become one of Mr. Manchin’s biggest financial supporters.
NYTimes: “Manchin’s Donors Include Pipeline Giants That Win in His Climate Deal”
So, there’s that.
What E.J. said
But for today, for right now, Joe Manchin deserves some serious props. Bravo to Joe. And also bravo to all the climate activists and commoners like you and me, who’ve worried for the state of the Union and the state of the Earth. All such principled persons deserve to take a moment and breathe a most welcome sigh of relief, until the day’s work begins anew.
I will leave the final word to the wonderful E.J. Dionne, and his notable recent Washington Post column, “Senate Democrats strike a blow against cynicism — and hopelessnesss.” It’s a tonic to the politics of fear-mongering and nihilism spewed ad nauseum by the Trumpublican Party (since the Republican Party of Dwight Eisenhower’s era is as dead as a doornail and gone like the wind):
If Congress had done nothing, the United States would have squandered any claim of global leadership on one of the central challenges of our time. It also would have been a signal that our political system is so dysfunctional that it could not even enact comparatively painless, positive incentives for moving toward cleaner energy …
Nothing feeds cynicism about democracy and collective action more than abject institutional failure. That’s why what happened on Sunday matters. Despite partisan obstruction, arcane rules and dilatory habits, the Senate struck a blow against hopelessness.
WASHINGTON POST: “Senate Democrats strike a blow against cynicism — and hopelessness”
PS
Given that we devoted an entire edition of WestVirginiaVille comparing the legacies of Manchin and Robert C. Byrd (Joe came up seriously short in their late-career accomplishments on behalf of the Republic), we hereby award him a bunch of ‘Byrd Points’ for mostly doing the right thing as the clock wound down.
