West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has issued a major threat of not supporting nominees appointed by the Biden administration if they continue to pander to climate change activists, a comment that no doubt made many of his colleagues in the upper chamber foam at the mouth. Manchin made his threat in a column he wrote that was published by the Houston Chronicle on Friday.
“Now, as energy leaders from across the world are gathered in Houston for the annual CERAWeek conference, the issue of America’s energy security and the role of the Inflation Reduction Act [IRA] to address this challenge will no doubt be top of mind,” he stated in the column.
“The fact is that the IRA was and is shaped to achieve one goal — energy security — by utilizing all our nation’s abundant resources. While the Biden Administration has continued to play political games and incorrectly frame the IRA as a climate change legislation, the truth is that the IRA is about securing America’s energy independence for the coming century,” he wrote.
Manchin then said, “If implemented as the law as written by those who have been entrusted to follow the law, the IRA will not just bolster the role of fossil fuels and renewables; it will help fuel a new century of progress for American manufacturing — and yes, emissions reductions.”
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He maintained the IRA is “critical” to U.S. energy security “because it codifies an all-of-the-above energy policy that invests in energy innovations, rather than energy elimination.” But he said the Biden administration continues to disregard congressional intent in key parts of the IRA.
“Instead of following the legislation designed to ensure America’s energy security, they have chosen to illogically advance a partisan climate agenda and appease radical activists,” he commented. “In fact, over the last few months, both the Department of Treasury and Department of the Interior have explicitly and unabashedly violated the letter of the law, the intent of the law, or both, in an effort to elevate climate goals above the energy and national security of this nation. This is wrong, and it must stop.”
Manchin charged that the Treasury department has “grossly mishandled the implementation of the electric vehicle credits, which he noted were aimed at trying to curtail “China’s dominance over this critical industry.”
The West Virginia Democrat then issued a warning that if the current administration keeps going down its current path, there will be “consequences now and in the future.”
“Today, I have also decided, as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, that I will not be moving forward the nomination of Laura Daniel-Davis as assistant secretary of the Department of Interior,” the senator said. “Daniel-Davis approved higher royalty rates for the Alaskan Cook Inlet sale, which were explicitly designed to decrease fossil energy.”
He concluded by saying, “Going forward, each and every proposed nominee I will review will be judged through one prism: Are they political partisans first or Americans first?”
It seems that Manchin is pretty ticked off about the way he was used to help get the disastrous Inflation Reduction Act passed, which has done nothing to help ease the suffering of normal Americans economically. He’s letting Biden know he’s not going to stand for being treated so badly. I wouldn’t be surprised if Manchin ended up in the Republican Party here soon.
