Manchin Pushes for More Climate Cuts From the Budget Bill

Public Policy & Regulation Group Leader Rich Gold spoke with The New York Times about Senator Joe Manchin's push for more climate cuts from the budget bill. Mr. Manchin has pushed Democrats to drop or weaken a second major climate change provision from the sweeping social policy and environmental spending bill that the White House hopes to finalize this week, according to two people familiar with the matter. A centrist Democrat from West Virginia, one of the country’s top coal- and gas-producing states, Mr. Manchin wants to remove or modify a provision that would impose a fee on emissions of methane, a powerful planet-warming pollutant that leaks from oil and gas wells.

President Biden is set to attend a major climate summit in Glasgow this weekend, and he hopes to point to the bill to make the case that the United States, the world’s largest historical greenhouse polluter, is finally taking strong, forceful action to cut its fossil fuel emissions — and to push other countries to do the same. Mr. Biden has pledged that the United States will reduce its emissions 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.

“The entire world knows the name Manchin now,” said Rich Gold. “So if he is able to go to Glasgow and say, here is the piece of paper representing the deal, and here’s Senator Manchin’s name on the bottom, I think the Germans will be OK.”

READ: Manchin Pushes for More Climate Cuts From the Budget Bill