Manchin accuses Republicans of ‘sacking up with Bernie’ Sanders when he doesn’t get his way

With some help from Fox News host Neil Cavuto, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) sought to frame Republicans as obstructionists for their opposition to his sweetheart deal with Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as a government shutdown looms, alleging they’re “sacking up with Bernie.”

(Video: Fox News)

On Monday’s edition of “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” the host hyped up the drama of a possible shutdown before bringing in Manchin to decry Republicans who were in near total agreement against his measure said to be simply about streamlining permitting reform.

“I never did think I’d have [Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)] and some of the extreme far left…What I didn’t expect is that Mitch McConnell and my Republican friends would be sacking up with Bernie or trying to get the same outcome by not passing permitting reform.”

As he expressed, “I never did think Bernie would ever…he’s never been for any permitting reforms whatsoever, and he’s not been for an energy policy that works for America–That means all-in; you have to have fossil.”

“You have to be strong with your fossil. You have to be energy independent if you want to be secured and if you want to be the superpower of the world, we can walk and chew gum. We can invest in the technology for the future, making sure we have the energy we need today. So I never did think I’d have Bernie and some of the extreme far left,” Manchin went on.

That had been already conveyed when 72 House Democrats had penned a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) standing in opposition to the senator’s proposal claiming, in part, “Permitting reform hurts already-overburdened communities, puts polluters on an even faster track, and divides the caucus.”

What wasn’t expressed in the interview was why the GOP was opposing the deal that Manchin had made with Schumer to secure his vote on the Inflation Reduction Act. Eighteen Republican states’ attorneys general led by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry made that clear Monday in a letter addressed to Schumer and Republican Senate Leader McConnell (Ky.) slamming the permitting measure as a new way to achieve federal government overreach that former President Barack Obama had sought with the 2015 Clean Power Plan.

“The Act contains assorted provisions that would effectively create a backdoor Clean Power Plan, allow the restricting of the electric grid by abrogating states’ traditional authority to set their own resource and utility policies and upset the careful balance of state and federal authority that has been a cornerstone of the Federal Power Act for nearly a century,” the letter read.

“These provisions eviscerate state sovereign authority, commandeer companies to carry out the will of a three-vote majority of FERC Commissioners, undermine the power of each citizen’s vote to decide policies at the state level, and inevitably force the citizens of our states to subsidize the costs of expensive and unreliable energy policy preferences of California and New York,” it continued and also asserted, “Certain states and companies favored by the current Administration and the current FERC majority will be empowered to distort other states’ resource and energy policy, take state and private land to construct infrastructure in furtherance of these schemes, and force the citizens who did not adopt these policies in their states to foot the bill for it all.”

Similarly, in the attempt to smear Republicans in a likely political move ahead of the midterms, neither Manchin nor Cavuto noted that Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) had introduced a competing permitting reform bill dubbed the Simplify Timelines and Assure Regulatory Transparency (START) Act that had been cosponsored by all Republican senators save for Rand Paul (Ky.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Susan Collins (Maine).

Instead, the lawmaker was given space to falsely claim that he was the only senator standing for a reform to the permitting process.

Kevin Haggerty

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