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joe manchin
Harris Backs Eliminating Senate Filibuster to Restore Federal Abortion Rights
"This is so important," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "Congress needs to step up and codify abortion rights—and we do that by ending the filibuster."
Sep 24, 2024
The Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, on Tuesday endorsed eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, the federal abortion rights ruling that was overturned two years ago.
"It is well within our reach to hold onto the majority in the Senate and take back the House," Harris, a former U.S. senator, toldWisconsin Public Radio. "I would also emphasize that while the presidential election is extremely important and dispositive of where we go moving forward, it also is about what we need to do to hold onto the Senate and win seats in the House."
"I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe," she continued. "And get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do."
Multiple current lawmakers joined a wide range of reproductive rights advocates in welcoming Harris' comments about ending the filibuster, which requires 60 of the Senate's 100 members to agree to hold a final vote on a bill.
"This is so important," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has shared her own abortion story. "Abortion access is under attack as extreme MAGA Republicans pass cruel laws to strip away our rights. Congress needs to step up and codify abortion rights—and we do that by ending the filibuster."
Unable to pass any defenses of reproductive healthcare in the divided Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has instead held recent votes on legislation regarding abortion, birth control, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) to call out Republicans.
"The filibuster is an undemocratic rule that prevents us from passing policies that a majority of Americans want. Look no further than last week's IVF vote," Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said Tuesday. "Could not agree more with Vice President Harris."
The Hillreported that after Harris' comments, Schumer told journalists that if Senate Democrats retain their majority next year, they will discuss creating an abortion "carveout" in the filibuster rule to pass abortion rights legislation.
Meanwhile, the campaign of former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for the November election, claimed on social media Tuesday that Harris' position is a "real threat to democracy."
In response, Nina Turner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy, declared that "the filibuster is anti-democratic in nature. It's a rule that takes the votes necessary in the Senate from 50 to 60."
Another critic of Harris' position was
retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), a key supporter of the filibuster. According toCNN's Manu Raju, the former Democrat—who left the party in May—responded to the vice president's remarks by saying, "Shame on her."
"She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It's the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids," Manchin continued, adding that he wouldn't support Harris for president.
Veteran Democratic political strategist Tom Bonier
said that "defending 'the filibuster' over women's bodily autonomy is one heck of a way for Joe Manchin to leave the scene. Though I imagine this lack of endorsement helps Harris much more than it hurts her."
While Manchin was a Democrat, he was a major obstructionist of the party's agenda under President Joe Biden—who backed a filibuster carveout for legislation to codify abortion rights in 2022. The other primary defender of the filibuster is Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who ditched the Democratic Party later that year and is also leaving the chamber after this term.
In the absence of federal legislation, GOP state lawmakers have ramped up efforts to restrict reproductive freedom since the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing justices—including three Trump appointees— reversedRoe with their June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.
Given the Republican-led attacks, reproductive freedom has been a major focus of the presidential contest. While Trump has
bragged about his role in reversing Roe, Harris has blamed him for states' recently enacted and deadly abortion bans.
It is "great to finally hear Kamala Harris be clear as our candidate about ending the filibuster to restore abortion rights nationwide," For All founder Kai Newkirk said Tuesday. "Abolishing the Jim Crow relic minority veto is essential to undo abortion bans and deliver the progress our nation needs."
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Manchin’s Last Hurrah Is a Bad Deal for the Planet
The fossil fuel lobby has now supersized their hostage demands with the single-minded goal of guarding against an incoming Harris administration by mandating a steady stream of fossil fuel leases and permits.
Aug 12, 2024
The hardest lesson I have learned over my career working on climate policy is to never underestimate the power and craftiness of the fossil fuel lobby. The evidence of their success: global fossil fuel consumption and emissions were higher in 2023 than at any time in history. That, in a nutshell, is how we are losing the fight against climate change.
This is why I grew alarmed when U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), the fossil fuel industry’s strongest champion in Congress, rushed a new energy deal through his committee late last month before it could be properly scrutinized. Manchin will give up his energy gavel when he retires this year. This is his last hurrah, and it’s a doozy.
The Energy Permitting Reform Act combines significant reforms in electricity transmission—potentially unlocking big gains in renewable energy—with coal, oil, and gas boons that would be big wins for the fossil fuel lobby.
The permitting laws surrounding oil, gas, and coal leases and permits may be an arcane abstraction to most analysts, but they are the keys to the energy kingdom to fossil fuel industries intent on expanding production for decades to come.
Now energy analysts are in the hot seat as they are asked to validate whether this energy bargain is a good deal for the planet.
Déjà Vu
The lessons from a similar energy deal in 2015 should give anyone pause before joining the Manchin parade. The 2015 budget deal paired renewable energy tax credits with a provision to lift the decades-old ban on exporting U.S. crude oil. Energy analysts rushed to validate the bargain. Those clean energy provisions would “dwarf the impact on carbon emissions of allowing oil exports,” wrote Michael Levi in an analysis widely quoted at the time.
To quell fears about the oil provisions, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sent a letter, writing: “While lifting the oil export ban remains atrocious policy, the wind and solar tax credits in the omnibus will eliminate around 10 times more carbon pollution than the exports of oil will add.”
Her appeal worked. The bill passed. Contrary to the assurances of energy experts, the oil export floodgates opened. Crude exports surged from zero to 4 million barrels a day today. This growth in exports was 20 times higher than the worst-case scenario forecasted in 2015 by Levi, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and others.
As I said at the start, the oil lobby is smart. They knew that fracking technology was going to transform oil and gas production, but they needed new markets.
The Foxes Are Snickering at the Hen House Door
The 2015 experience should caution everyone to step back and look more closely at what the fossil fuel lobby helped Manchin write behind closed doors. The permitting laws surrounding oil, gas, and coal leases and permits may be an arcane abstraction to most analysts, but they are the keys to the energy kingdom to fossil fuel industries intent on expanding production for decades to come.
There is ample cause for concern. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Manchin’s co-author, gloats that the bill “guarantee[s] future access to oil and natural gas resources on federal lands and waters” in ways that not even former U.S. President Donald Trump could do under current law. Further, he says that “it will permanently end President Joe Biden’s reckless ban on new liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board agrees, urging Trump to “steal a march on Kamala Harris by endorsing” Manchin’s energy bill.
The Danger of Locking in Fossil Fuel Infrastructure
Changing the law in order to expedite new fossil fuel infrastructure can directly threaten global climate goals. The IPCC, the world’s leading authority on climate science, warned in their 2022 report that “cancellation of plans for new fossil fuel infrastructures” is needed to avoid “significant carbon lock-ins, stranded assets, and other additional costs” and potentially putting the Paris climate goals “out of reach” (p. 267).
Similarly, the International Energy Agency, the world’s leading tracker of global energy trends, concluded in their 2023 World Energy Outlook that “investment in oil and gas today is almost double the level required in the [net zero emissions scenario] in 2030, signaling a clear risk of protracted fossil fuel use that would put the 1.5°C goal out of reach” (p. 19).
Supersized Demands from Fossil Fuel Allies
Every energy bill ever passed by Congress has some degree of “hold your nose” compromise. Even the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the most important piece of climate legislation ever enacted, gave some ground, tying oil and gas leases together with offshore wind leases in a Beltway version of a shotgun wedding.
But the fossil fuel lobby has now supersized their hostage demands with the single-minded goal of guarding against an incoming Harris administration by mandating a steady stream of fossil fuel leases and permits.
In a separate analysis (update available here), I calculated the energy and greenhouse gas impacts of the LNG portion of the Manchin bill. The five LNG liquefaction plants expedited by the bill are designed to produce up to 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas through 2050 (10.6 Bcf/day).
This long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure is far more likely to dampen investment in renewable energy, electrification, and energy conservation than displace other fossil fuels.
Liquefying gas, which must be cooled to 260°F below zero, requires significant energy. According to EIA, 14% of the gas used to produce LNG is consumed during liquefaction. That means that up to 13 trillion additional cubic feet of natural gas through 2050 (1.7 Bcf/day) will be consumed to produce the LNG from these five projects.
The total volume of natural gas consumed and processed by these LNG projects (94 trillion cubic feet through 2050) is enough to meet almost all of the gas needs for homes across America (99 trillion cubic feet) over the same timeframe. It is also equivalent to 62% of the total amount of gas (152 trillion cubic feet) EIA forecasts will be used by the electric power sector from 2030-2050.
The lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of all LNG produced by these five plants would be 616 million metric tons annually (13 gigatons through 2050), equivalent to 165 coal-fired power plants.
Using government estimates of the economic damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions, we can put a dollar estimate to these emissions: $1.7 trillion (cumulatively through 2050).
Keep in mind this only accounts for the LNG section of the Manchin bill and does not include the impacts of the bill’s oil, coal, and gas leasing mandates.
A Misused Measuring Stick
Assumptions used in greenhouse gas analysis can have profound effects on policymaking. It’s impossible to achieve numerical science targets without good measurements.
One set of assumptions in particular can make or break assessments of fossil fuel infrastructure. Energy substitution analysis looks at what happens to energy markets when new energy sources are added or removed, which in turn shapes how greenhouse gas emissions are calculated.
This is where some energy analyses get sloppy, relying on outdated, simplified assumptions to minimize the climate impact of fossil fuel infrastructure. The federal government is particularly bad at this. It can be awkward to approve projects after finding they superchage global warming. My analysis of seven major environmental impact statements across five federal agencies found that the agencies erased 98% of the greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas projects, on average, obscuring $1 trillion in climate damages.
The pertinent question when assessing the substitution effects of energy infrastructure is whether the energy helps or hurts in achieving deep decarbonization pathways. This question is kept firmly in sight when analysts assess clean energy supply policies but can fade into the background when people argue that fossil fuel supplies don’t matter because the emissions aren’t any worse than current pollution sources.
Someone can claim a punch to your right arm won’t hurt more than a punch to your left arm, but the reality is that the punch still hurts. You can claim that LNG doesn’t increase emissions because it’s substituting for other fossil fuels, but the reality is that the planet is still getting cooked.
The theoretical argument that U.S. LNG coming online in five years will replace coal in China is especially unrealistic in light of global and regional trends toward renewable electricity. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA): “Evidence from China, the world’s largest coal consumer, shows that LNG is unlikely to materially displace coal-fired power generation.”
Keep in mind that these LNG plants won’t come online until about 2030, and the billions of dollars invested are dependent on decades of LNG production thereafter. This long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure is far more likely to dampen investment in renewable energy, electrification, and energy conservation than displace other fossil fuels.
The oil and gas industry has a particularly long and successful history of creating and defending markets to absorb supply. Consider, for example, the oil lobby’s successful efforts to keep fuel economy standards, and how they have pushed fossil fuel-based plastics across the world. Now that America is shifting off gas, they have turned their sights to shifting those emissions overseas.
Common Ground
There are many factors that go into assessing the impacts of Manchin’s energy bill, with valid grounds for different approaches and results. I suggest the following principles as potential common ground and a worthwhile test for any analysis:
- Be transparent — Include the full (i.e., gross) lifecycle emissions from all fossil fuels that are brought to market by the bill as a reference point so users can understand the impact of substitution assumptions.
- Be consistent — Assumptions used to assess the emissions profile of policies that bring fossil fuels to markets should be analogous with the assumptions used to assess the benefits of clean energy policies. If permitting policy to expedite clean energy infrastructure can lead to big emission reductions, then it also stands to reason that permitting policy to expedite fossil fuel infrastructure can also lead to big emission increases.
- Use the precautionary principle — Assume that fossil fuel lobbyists knew what they were doing when they wrote the detailed fossil fuel provisions of the bill. Talk to the lawyers who take these companies to court and understand the stakes when language mandates the use of particular studies and processes. At a minimum, provide a worst-case scenario that truly reflects the breadth of what the authors say their bill will do.
- Get methane right — Too many emissions models rely on methane data that is known to be wrong. Numerous studies (for example, here, here and here), based on more than 1 million measurements, show real-world methane emission leaks from U.S. natural gas production are 3-4 times higher than the industry-reported data used by the government and modelers. Peer-reviewed studies show that, with proper methane accounting, natural gas has a climate impact as bad as coal.
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'Not a Good Deal for Working Families': Sanders Votes No on Tax Bill
One campaigner said that "Democrats need to think bigger, aim higher, and hold corporations accountable instead of enabling obscene corporate tax dodging in exchange for breadcrumbs for working families."
Aug 01, 2024
Continuing months of progressive opposition to the bipartisan Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday voted against advancing the bill and highlighted how it would give tax breaks to major corporations.
The bill passed the House 357-70 in January, shortly after it was negotiated by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo). It would revive a version of the expanded child tax credit (CTC) that, as Sanders (I-Vt.) noted in a statement Thursday, "reduced childhood poverty in America by over 40%."
"I cannot, in good conscience, however, vote for the tax package that is being voted upon today," Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, explained. "At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we should not be giving tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks to some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America."
"Incredibly, this legislation would hand out a $2 billion retroactive tax break each to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon—some of the most profitable defense contractors in the world," he pointed out. "Further, at a time when artificial intelligence and automation threatens to displace millions of American workers, this legislation could provide billions of dollars in tax breaks to companies like Amazon, Google, Verizon, and Facebook to replace workers with machines or robots."
As Sanders detailed:
Three years ago, as part of the American Rescue Plan, Congress passed an expanded child tax credit that put $300 a month per child directly into the bank accounts of tens of millions of families. This provision alone lifted nearly 4 million children out of poverty.
The tax bill on the floor today is only one-tenth the size of the child tax credit in the American Rescue Plan and would only last for three years. When all is said and done, this bill would provide at least $3 in corporate tax breaks for every $1 in tax cuts for working families with children. That is not a good deal.
Stephen Prince, vice-chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and founder of Card Market, was similarly critical on Thursday, saying that "this was a bad deal. But remarkably, it was killed by a handful of Republicans who believe they can win even more payouts for their ultra-rich donors next year. Democrats need to think bigger, aim higher, and hold corporations accountable instead of enabling obscene corporate tax dodging in exchange for breadcrumbs for working families."
"As the 2025 tax battle gets underway, we should be on guard for efforts to further enrich corporations and the ultrawealthy via the tax code," Prince warned. "Democrats must grapple with the reality that Republicans and their billionaire donors are not acting in good faith. They must not waste next year's opportunity—the expiration of the 2017 Trump tax scam—by entrenching a broken system. The goal should be a fundamental overhaul of our tax code so that it delivers for American workers."
"Anything less is a failure," he continued. "Republicans continue to sell the snake oil of 'trickle-down' economics to Americans. Let me be clear: At some point, they will have to acknowledge that the only way to fix our economy and our country is to raise taxes on the rich. Their favorite pet project of cutting taxes for rich people is ruining the country and leaving behind a mess for which our children and grandchildren will never forgive us."
The Senate's procedural vote that blocked the Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act from moving forward mostly fell along party lines. A total of eight senators from both parties—including Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), former President Donald Trump's running mate for the November election—did not participate.
Three Republicans—Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Markwayne Mullin (Okla.), and Rick Scott (Fla.)—joined all Democrats present as well as Independent Sens. Angus King (Maine) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) in supporting the legislation, though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) switched his vote to "no" so he can bring the bill up for a vote again.
Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) voted against advancing the bill. The soon-retiring ex-Democrat previously partnered with Republicans to prevent the extension of the CTC expansion enacted during the Covid-19 pandemic. After the aid to families ended, the child poverty rate more than doubled in 2022, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Since the bipartisan bill—which is backed by the White House—was announced in January, progressives in Congress have been urging Democrats to "stay at the table and demand a better deal for our children," in the words of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who was among nearly two dozen House Democrats who voted against the legislation.
Other House progressives who opposed the bill earlier this year included Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Greg Casar (Texas), Maxwell Frost (Fla.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), and Mark Pocan (Wis.).
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