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‘I will not back down’: Biden vows to use executive powers after Manchin rejects green agenda

July 16, 2022 | | Print Article

President Joe Biden has threatened to take unilateral action to enact his radical climate change agenda in the wake of Sen. Joe Manchin signaling he will not support the party’s efforts in Congress to pass a sweeping climate change bill.

“So let me be clear: if the Senate will not move to tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry, I will take strong executive action to meet this moment,” he said in a statement Friday.

“My actions will create jobs, improve our energy security, bolster domestic manufacturing and supply chains, protect us from oil and gas price hikes in the future, and address climate change. I will not back down: the opportunity to create jobs and build a clean energy future is too important to relent,” the president said.

The statement came hours after Manchin told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that he won’t support climate change legislation being tagged onto a reconciliation bill that congressional Democrats are currently looking to pass.

“I said, ‘Chuck, until we see the July inflation figures, until we see the July Federal Reserve interest rates, let’s wait till that comes out so we know that we’re going down a path that won’t be inflammatory, to add more to inflation,'” Manchin later recalled to West Virginia radio show host Hoppy Kercheval.

Listen:

The senator’s concern is that additional spending and regulations will only engender more inflation and thus, more economic harm. But to hear Democrats and their media allies tell it, this concern is destroying the world.

“It seems odd that Manchin would choose as his legacy to be the one man who single-handedly doomed humanity,” former Obama-era official John Podesta said on Friday to The New York Times.

Podesta’s remarks have since gone uber-viral in the media:

But in a statement issued Friday, Manchin’s spokesperson pushed back on this media narrative.

“Political headlines are of no value to the millions of Americans struggling to afford groceries and gas as inflation soars to 9.1%. Senator Manchin believes it’s time for leaders to put political agendas aside, reevaluate and adjust to the economic realities the country faces to avoid taking steps that add fuel to the inflation fire,” spokesperson Sam Runyon said.

The truth is that Manchin isn’t wrong to be concerned. In an analysis published in May, Morgan Stanley blamed current inflation primarily on the “excessive” spending of 2021.

“In summary, the slack created by the covid recession is being absorbed much faster than usual. While some of this absorption is due to the supply disruptions created by the lockdowns, we think it was more so due to excessive fiscal stimulus provided during the pandemic, particularly the last $1.9T package at the end of March 2021 just as the economy was already emerging from the lockdowns. In our view, this was what turbocharged consumption and drove inflation to 40-year highs,” the analysis read.

The results of this unnecessary spending have been disastrous. But again, to hear Democrats and their media allies tell it, this isn’t true.

“[W]e are stronger economically than we have been in history,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed earlier this month.

Fact-check: FALSE.

In a Twitter thread posted Friday morning, Jim Geraghty demonstrated otherwise.

Look:

The economy is by all measurements a hot mess, and the Democrat Party’s attempts to inject even more money and regulations into it will only produce further heartache. As the rapper Notorious B.I.G., once said, “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.”

Vivek Saxena
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