Just about the only good idea to come from a Democratic senator this congress was Joe Manchin’s permitting-reform proposal. It would have greenlit all remaining permits for the Mountain Valley pipeline in West Virginia and limited the time and length of all reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act.
The other West Virginia senator, Republican Shelley Moore Capito, introduced an even better permitting-reform package that would also codify various regulatory decisions from the Trump administration to reduce red tape and allow states the right to develop energy on federal lands. But Manchin’s proposal came from the majority party in the Senate and had the supposed support of the majority leader.
Manchin made a “deal” with Chuck Schumer where Manchin would support the climate-spending package that was named the Inflation Reduction Act, and then Schumer would bring the permitting reforms to the floor. But it was never really a deal in the first place.
A true deal would have been to include the permitting reforms in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and then demand that all Democrats vote for it. Doing so would have been an actual compromise among Democrats, and it would have had the added benefit of including at least one provision in the law that would actually reduce costs and restrain the growth of government.
As it was ultimately constructed, it should be no surprise that this “deal” did not play out as agreed.
Manchin, for all his posturing about inflation and spending during the Build Back Better debate, is ultimately a tax-and-spend Democrat. If opposing the single largest spending bill in American history is all it takes to be a budget hawk, the term has been defined down so far as to have lost all meaning.
Manchin voted for the inflationary, debt-exploding, unnecessary, $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act in 2021. He voted for the infrastructure bill that included $550 billion in new spending, about half of which wasn’t paid for. And on top of all that spending, he had agreed to vote for up to $1.5 trillion on Build Back Better, should a deal have been made as to its contents.
So when the hundreds of billions in spending in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act came along, for all his hemming and hawing, it should not have been a surprise that Manchin wound up voting for it.
And it should not have been a surprise that Schumer would not actually bring to the floor a bill that divides his own caucus. The radical environmentalist voices on the left would not abide anything perceived as weakening the NEPA, and they certainly wouldn’t abide anything to approve pipeline construction. The permitting reform would have needed bipartisan support to pass.
But that support was prefaced on Republicans contracting mass amnesia about Manchin stabbing them in the back to allow the Inflation Reduction Act to pass. The Republican conference was united in its opposition to the Democrats’ bill, having seen it for what it was, a progressive climate-spending bill, rather than what Democrats and their accomplices in the media tried to brand it as. Based on Manchin’s past statements about inflation, the deficit, and budget gimmicks, he should not have voted for the Democrats’ spending bill, which did nothing to address inflation, added to the deficit, and contained budget gimmicks. But he voted for it anyway, leaving Mitch McConnell cross and giving Schumer a legislative win.
Manchin did not get played here. This episode played out exactly as one would expect if you assume that Manchin is ultimately a tax-and-spend Democrat, which is what he has always been. This is a senator who has played games about his support for Obamacare for years, trying to stake out some kind of moderate position in his rhetoric, but then siding with Democrats every chance he gets to expand the program.
Manchin might not use the progressive-speak on cultural issues that most Democrats use, and he might vote to confirm Republican appointees, but on fiscal policy, he’s a run-of-the-mill Democrat who has hardly ever seen a spending bill he didn’t like. What was unusual was his insistence on some kind of limit, even a $1.5 trillion limit, on Build Back Better. That this supposed deal with Schumer blew up should have been completely expected.