Bina Venkataraman, editor-at-large at the Boston Globe, joins Cheddar Politics to discuss Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) shift on addressing climate change and the investments in climate and energy security in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Cheddar Politics

Manchin Flip-Flops on Addressing Climate Change

Welcome back to cheddar politics after Senator joe Manchin killed the build back better deal late last year, many democrats thought they lost their last best hope of passing transformative climate legislation, but lucky for them Mansion, he eventually got there. And the inflation reduction act of 2022 includes significant investment in fighting climate change on top of prescription drug reform and raising taxes on corporations. Earlier, I sat down with Bina Venkataraman, editor at large at the boston globe and former climate advisor in the Obama White House about the bill. And we started with her overall impression of Senator Mansions sudden switch, given all the back and forth over this past year and build back better and build back mansion. Did you think that Senator joe Manchin would ever get there on a climate bill? He is from a coal powered state. Did you think that he would ever kind of get around to being serious about doing something? Well, it's so hard Megan to appear into the heart and soul of joe Manchin and know what's really there. And of course, as you pointed out, we have this uh irony and and really sort of um terrible structure in american politics where we can have sitting members of Congress also holding investments in the very areas where they chair a committee like the Senate energy committee and joe Manchin. And so there's a lot of cynicism that has surrounded scrutinizing the way Senator Manchin has approached the issue of climate change and the issue of clean energy investments and the president's proposals and build back better to really aggressively go after climate change. So it's been really hard to track what's going on. But I think what's really interesting about what happened in this deal, the reconciliation proposal for the inflation reduction act that Senator Schumer, Senate majority Leader Schumer and Mansion came up with is that they were doing this sort of behind closed doors and there were a number of important figures leaning on joe Manchin to bring him to the table on these climate and energy investments, including, we know behind the scenes, his colleagues in the Senate chris coons of Delaware, john Hickenlooper, former Governor of Colorado, now Senator Tina smith of Minnesota, but also key figures outside government. Bill Gates gave him a call Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary gave him a call leaders of clean energy companies that wanted to invest in west Virginia in his state were calling him to say we really need these climate investments. Now, what of all these things led to him coming to the table? It's hard to say he did get some important concessions from Senator Schumer, it seems in the in the bill they negotiated, including a guarantee of further Also fuel leases on federal lands for their exploration pipeline in there. So it's not all good news for the climate, but the net effect of this proposal is just a historic amount of investment in clean energy technologies in cutting emissions. And it could put the us back on track to meet its own pledge under the Paris agreement of 2015, which would be a huge game changer on the global stage as well. So you recently wrote in the globe that you feel like for the first time, policies towards climate are moving in favor of the planet, meaning moving to fight the climate crisis. What makes you say that? Well, it's a little too soon to say that this is for sure happening, but there's something very different in the air. When you look back at 2008, for example, when President Obama was elected, climate change was not a key priority of the first term and we had a bold piece of legislation on climate change in front of the US Congress cap and trade and because of the White House's priorities around health care and other critical issues, climate change just didn't rise to the top of the pile. There wasn't enough support in the Senate, there wasn't enough support in the White House to get that across the finish line. What's changed in American politics since 2008 is in part just an incredible amount of activism on the part of young people activists who really held the Democratic presidential candidates in 2020 accountable for having aggressive platforms on climate change who really have pushed and given a mandate to the Biden administration to make climate change a priority right out of the gate. They're leaning on their senators, they're leaning on their Congress people in a much different way. There's also been a shift in sort of the private sector approach to this problem. There are a lot more companies and investors who care about clean energy, who care about electric vehicles. There are a lot more folks in the auto industry interested in the markets that are opening up around these technologies, Wind energy has just taken over in texas. So we're in a different political moment, in large part because of what's happening outside the halls of government and what's different to me about what's happening now versus in the Obama years when a huge number of us were trying to push for climate action is that we finally have a US Congress poised to pass this reconciliation package, this inflation reduction act, let's hope it gets across the finish line. And the difference between that and the Obama era climate policies is that by the time the Obama administration got around to doing all this important work, it was using the lever of executive action, executive orders and that was fragile. The trump administration came in and reversed a lot of those policies. We saw states and we saw companies suing the Environmental Protection Agency, pushing to rollback fuel emission standards, pushing to roll back the regulation Power plants. What's different about getting an act of Congress of this scale where we're talking about $369 billion dollars of investment in alternative climate technologies in cutting emissions and getting methane emissions to be slashed. Is that the force of congressional power and congressional spending is a lot harder to reverse in a future administration. It's a lot harder to put back in the bag once we start rolling that out. And let's talk about that dollar number, right? Because that is a huge number. Nearly $400 billion in energy security and to fight climate change. How how significant is that amount of money? You said that once it's out, it's out of the bag, it stays out of the bag. But but how significant is that chunk of money? I think, especially for people who've watched the government spend so much money in the past few years to fight covid and for covid relief, What does $400 billion mean? So one thing to keep in mind about this deal is that the way they've engineered it is to also be a net reduction of the deficit. So because of the proposals that schumer and Mansion came up with around corporate tax reform and increasing some of the taxes on the very wealthiest and very wealthiest corporations that and closing some of the loopholes around taxes and enforcing tax collection, that this amount of money isn't necessarily going to be something that's a net, um, uh, you know, a problem for the economy. In fact, what they're trying to do is think about how do we reduce costs to consumers, prescription drugs? How do we reduce some of the volatility in the economy that's created by relying on fossil fuel energy and over time reduce inflation. It may not help us deal with an immediate inflation though it's a good political play to call it the inflation reduction act. So uh the amount of money on the scale of things in terms of government spending is kind of going to be a moot point if it stays roughly the way it is now in terms of having those corporate tax reforms on it. Uh But uh in terms of the scale of investment in climate change and alternative to um to fossil fuels for the economy. This is an historic piece of legislation. Historic amount of spending the U. S. Government has never spent this much to fight climate change directly. And what's more important I would say even than the dollar amount though. That's very important is the way that those incentives tax credits investments are being targeted. So for one this is the first time where you see tax credits being applied not just to specific technologies like wind and solar but in a sort of technology agnostic way. So the proposal is to spend this money to give tax credits to all kinds of innovators and inventors who come up with any kind of low carbon or zero carbon emission technology which means it could unleash all kinds of new ways and alternatives to thinking about how we power our homes, how we power our industries, how we power our cars that we just don't know yet what those are. Thanks to being a venture trauma editor at large for the boston globe and a former climate advisor in the Obama White House. And I want to bring back baker for a fun little segment. The Senate is still ironing out the details of the inflation reduction act. So we wanna give you a quick guide to some key vocabulary and right here in the next few days, baker kick us off. We love a good vocab games. So the first term you might have already heard and this is a very powerful person in Washington. We're not talking about the Senate majority leader. We're talking about the parliamentarian parliamentarian, essentially the Senate's rules expert, She advises the chamber on the rules of lawmaking and parliamentary procedure and with the inflation reduction act, she's going through all 700 plus pages and making sure all of it has to do with the federal budget and democrats can move forward only Megan when she gives the thumbs up here. That's right. The next term you'll probably here is vote a Rama. That might sound a little too fun for Washington and it is the vote a Rama is a period during reconciliation where senators are allowed to offer up an unlimited number of amendments on budget related measures. This only happens when senators use this reconciliation process to avoid a filibuster. It can go on for so many, many hours, but it ultimately results in just nothing because the majority can just offer an amendment at the end that restores the original bill. I love pointless things. Senators often say the vote a rama is meaningless, but they still use it as a chance to get their opponents to take tough votes on controversial things in an election year. And then where do we see that in ads against them as a result? And the final term you might hear is related by the way to the vote, a rama but a little less fun. A little sad and depressing. We're talking about the poison pill. Now poise still doesn't really refer to any one specific thing here. It's actually a general descriptor used for an attempt from a senator who opposes a bill to add an amendment that would basically essentially kill the entire bill now poison pill amendment. Often they don't work and they can be defeated if the majority sticks together. And that's a big if a lot of times, but at least right now, that's not certain since Senator Kirsten cinema hasn't said whether or not she'll support the bill or not. Who knows, at the end of the day if she will. She's apparently been taking meetings with members of the business community within Arizona she's been getting pressure on both sides of the of the spectrum to sort of support or tank the bill, which would have to think democrats are really going to go after her hard in a primary if she sinks this entire bill, given how much work they got to get joe Manchin on here. And but republicans seem pretty optimistic that maybe they won't, they'll be able to convince her to tank the bill, so who knows what's going to happen here? The main thing I keep saying baker is, I do not think that Senator schumer and Senator Manchin would have announced a bill that they did not know what's going to pass and I think that so she can make it dramatic and they can draw it out and it can be the best kind of political theater heading into an august break, but I think that she's going to get in line like they always do, because you do not want to be the person from Arizona who takes climate legislation that could help your state survive. I don't know, a 10 20 degree increase in the climate and it's already hot there as we speak. And by the way, we also we also don't even know at the end of the day how much of this bill, the parliamentarian, who at the end of the day is the most important person here will allow to get through the reconciliation process. All right after the break, everyone, Speaker Pelosi made big waves this week with her Taiwan trip, we're gonna take a closer look at the complexity in Taiwan that's coming up next. Don't go anywhere.