Tag: joe manchin
GOP Senators Appear At USO Photo Op, Then Vote Down Vets Health Care

GOP Senators Appear At USO Photo Op, Then Vote Down Vets Health Care

Oh, this is perfect. Immediately before they voted against health care for veterans affected by toxic exposure during their service, several Senate Republicans tweeted about how excited they were to join the USO to assemble care packages for members of the military.

Sens. Rick Scott, Mitt Romney, and Cindy Hyde-Smith all made care packages for the military for at least long enough for a photo op, then tweeted about how grateful they were for the opportunity, and how much they support the troops. Then they went and voted against the PACT Act, a bill that had passed the Senate 84-14 just weeks ago before coming back this week for a minor tweak. The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (or PACT) Act extends health coverage for 23 respiratory illnesses and cancers potentially caused by burn pits where millions of veterans were exposed to those toxins.

Republicans shifted against the PACT Act because Democrats announced a plan for a completely unrelated bill: the reconciliation deal with Sen. Joe Manchin to invest in clean energy and health care while raising some corporate taxes. That’s what it took for them to go from being so grateful to the USO for the opportunity to assemble care packages for service members to voting to deny health care to veterans for conditions related to their time in the military.


Comedian Jon Stewart, who has become a dedicated advocate for veterans, skewered Scott at a Thursday press conference.

“It’s beautiful,” Stewart said, dripping with sarcasm. “Did you get the package? I think it has M&M’s in it, and some cookies and some moist towelettes.”

“None of them care—except to tweet,” he added. “Boy, they’ll tweet it. Can’t wait to see what they come up with on Veterans Day, on Memorial Day. Well, this is the reality of it.”

“We’ve seen partisanship and games within Congress for years,” Jeremy Butler, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, was quoted by NBC News. “But what is shocking is that so many senators would literally be willing to play with veterans’ lives so openly like this.

“They’re manufacturing reasons to vote against legislation that they literally voted for just last month,” Butler continued. “And so it’s really a new level of low.”

After they blocked the bill, some Senate Republicans celebrated with fist bumps and handshakes:


The PACT Act, if Republicans ever allow it to pass, will extend coverage to 3.5 million veterans.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos


Budget Bill Revives Biden Vow To Tax Wealthy And Corporations

Budget Bill Revives Biden Vow To Tax Wealthy And Corporations

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Joe Biden's campaign promise to increase taxes on corporations and the wealthy as part of a battle against glaring income inequality in the United States got an unexpected boost on Wednesday.

Early proposals to increase tax rates from Biden and his fellow Democrats hit a brick wall in Congress after Republicans -- and some Democrats -- opposed them. But a sudden reversal by West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, a swing vote in the divided Senate, has given Biden's tax agenda a new lease on life.

The amount U.S. companies contribute to tax revenue that funds roads and schools has plummeted since the 1940s.

Biden has often said in office that companies should instead pay a "fair share," a contrast to deference to private markets begun by Republicans with former President Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, and buoyed by rounds of tax cuts and deregulation, by both parties.

The new compromise bill includes $430 billion in new spending on energy, electric vehicle tax credits and health insurance investments. It more than pays for itself by raising minimum taxes for big companies and enforcing existing tax laws, Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.

Biden said during a speech on Thursday that the deal would "for the first time in a long time begin to restore fairness to the tax code - begin to restore fairness by making the largest corporations in America pay their fair share without any new taxes on people making under $400,000 a year."

The bill would impose a 15 percent minimum tax on corporations with profits over $1 billion, raising $313 billion over a decade, they wrote. Companies could claim net operating losses and tax credits against the 15 percent.

The U.S. corporate tax rate dropped to 21 percent from 35 percent after a 2017 tax cut pushed by then-President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans, but many companies pay much less than that, and some of the largest pay no federal taxes, research groups including the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy have found.

Biden proposed raising that rate to 28 percent last year as part of an infrastructure spending bill, but the tax component was struck from the bill.

The new Manchin-Schumer bill also aims to close the so-called carried interest loophole, long a goal of Democrats.

Carried interest refers to a longstanding Wall Street tax break that let many private equity and hedge fund financiers pay the lower capital gains tax rate on much of their income, instead of the higher income tax rate paid by wage earners.

Eliminating the loophole would raise $14 billion, the senators say.

Schumer said he expected the Senate to vote on the legislation next week, to "lower prescription drug prices, tackle the climate crisis with urgency and vigor, ensure the wealthiest corporations and individuals pay their fair share in taxes, and reduce the deficit."

The Manchin-Schumer measure is substantially smaller than the multi-trillion-dollar spending bill Democrats had envisioned last year.

But it still represents a major advance for Biden's policy agenda ahead of midterm elections on Nov. 8 that could determine whether Democrats retain control of Congress.

It came just as Biden celebrated Senate passage of a bill aimed at boosting the U.S. semiconductor industry, another key priority of his administration, and as he struggles with low job approval ratings and ebbing support from his own party after a series of conservative Supreme Court rulings.

"This bill will reduce the deficit beyond the record-setting $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction we have already achieved this year, which will help fight inflation as well," Biden said in a statement.

"And we will pay for all of this by requiring big corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, with no tax increases at all for families making under $400,000 a year," he said.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; editing by Heather Timmons and Mark Porter)

Exclusive: Biden To Announce Executive Orders On Climate Crisis​​

Exclusive: Biden To Announce Executive Orders On Climate Crisis​​

By Jarrett Renshaw and Valerie Volcovici

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Joe Biden plans to announce new executive orders aimed at tackling the climate crisis on Wednesday during a trip to Somerset, Massachusetts, sources familiar with his plans told Reuters.

The announcement is unlikely to include the declaration of a climate emergency, which would enable the use of the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of a wide range of renewable energy products and systems.

Senate Democrats and environmental groups have been calling for such a declaration in light of news that Democratic Senator Joe Manchin was not ready to support key climate provisions in Congress.

A White House official said on Tuesday that Biden has made it clear that if the Senate did not act, he will. "We are considering all options and no decision has been made," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Biden campaigned on tough action on climate change in his presidential campaign and pledged in international climate negotiations to cut climate pollution by 50 percent by 2030 and reach 100 percent clean electricity by 2035.

But his climate agenda has been derailed by several major setbacks, including clinching enough congressional support to pass crucial climate and clean energy measures in a federal budget bill, record-setting gasoline prices and global energy market disruption caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Supreme Court, in a decision issued earlier this month, also signaled that federal agencies cannot undertake major policy action on climate and other areas without express consent from Congress.

Democrats are discussing the path forward for major climate action on Capitol Hill today, said Senator Tom Carper (D-DE), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Carper didn't answer a question about Biden declaring a climate emergency but said he thinks there are other issues the Senate could move forward on, including methane emission reduction and tax provisions for nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw and Valerie Volcovici; additional reporting by David Morgan, Doina Chiacu and Nandita Bose; editing by Chris Gallagher, Doina Chiacu and Jonathan Oatis)

The Coal Baron Killing Our Planet Is A United States Senator

The Coal Baron Killing Our Planet Is A United States Senator

President Joe Biden's goals to tackle climate change were shattered this week when Sen. Joe Manchin, the conservative Democratic West Virginia coal baron, announced that he would not support Biden's proposed initiatives. Manchin's colleagues had hoped that he would agree to something – even modest policies that aimed to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, lower greenhouse gas emissions, invest in renewable sources of energy, or enhance environmental protections.

Manchin's intimate ties to the declining coal industry – from which he personally rakes in millions of dollars per year – have long been a thorn in the side of the science-based progressive climate agenda. The Senate, being evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, has provided Manchin with the opportunity to seize and exploit rare swing vote power.

On Friday, after dragging Senate Democrats through lengthy negotiations that in hindsight appear to have not been in the best of faith, Manchin moved the goal posts, revealing to radio host Hoppy Kercheval that he wants to monitor inflation for another month (or more) before he reconsiders signing onto crucial climate legislation.

“I am where I have been — I would not put my staff through this, I would not put myself through this if I wasn’t sincere about trying to find a pathway forward to do something that’s good for our country,” Manchin said.

"Let’s wait until that comes out, so we know that we’re going down the path it won’t be inflammatory, to add more to inflation,” he continued, adding that “I want climate. I want an energy policy. I thought we were moving truly in the right direction.”

This coincided with search and rescue operations stemming from unusually severe storms that unleashed devastating floods and inundated wide swaths of Manchin's home state.

Nonetheless, numerous Democrats in the Senate and the House of Representatives blasted Manchin following his break from the party's priorities. Although there is a glimmer of hope that progress can be made when Congress returns from its summer recess in September, expectations are low.

“It’s been a really, really terrible day,” Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota told The New York Times. “If Senator Manchin wants a deal on climate and energy, he can have one in a heartbeat. This is Senator Manchin’s deal for the taking, and if it doesn’t happen, it is on him.”

Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that Manchin “has shown that he doesn’t know how to close a deal — or he doesn’t want to close a deal — and that you can’t trust him.”

Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan remarked that “I can’t get blood from a stone" and that “I’m not in the Senate. They’re clearly having problems negotiating among themselves. And I will just — for my constituents — take what I can get.”

On Saturday, Doctor Leah Stokes, an associate professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, tore into Manchin in an editorial in TheNew York Times.

'With the fate of our planet hanging in the balance, his every utterance was of global significance. But his statements have been like a weather vane, blowing in every direction," Stokes wrote. "Manchin has wasted what little time this Congress had left to make real progress on the climate crisis."

This has put the president in a politically precarious position.

"Wary of upsetting the delicate negotiations, the Biden Administration has held back on using the full force of its executive authority on climate over the past 18 months, likely in hopes of securing legislation first," Stokes said.

"The stakes of delay could not be higher," she continued. "Last summer, while the climate negotiations dragged on, record-breaking heat waves killed hundreds of Americans. Hurricanes, wildfires and floods pummeled the country from coast to coast. Over the last 10 years, the largest climate and weather disasters have cost Americans more than a trillion dollars — far more than the Democrats had hoped to spend to stop the climate crisis. With each year we delay, the climate impacts keep growing. We do not have another month, let alone another year or decade, to wait."

Time, Stokes stressed, is rapidly running out.

"Democrats need to pass their reconciliation package this summer," she pointed out. While Manchin claims that “we’ve had good conversations, we’ve had good negotiations," Stokes noted that "this is doublespeak; he simply doesn’t want to be held accountable for his actions. He has consistently said one thing and done another."

In fact, Stokes explained, the Senate's "package would have built domestic manufacturing, supporting more than 750,000 climate jobs annually. It would have also fought inflation, helping to make energy bills more affordable for everyday Americans."

Manchin's intransigence, however, does not exist in a vacuum.

"Manchin has taken more money from the oil and gas industry than any other member of Congress — including every Republican — according to federal filings," Stokes highlighted.

The United States, meanwhile, is still the world's second-largest emitter of planet-warming gases. Its recommitment to the Paris Climate Accord – from which Donald Trump withdrew the country early in his presidency – means little if serious efforts are not undertaken to break away from oil.

Individual states – mostly led by Democrats – are pushing forward with their own approaches to greenifying their economies. But without a cohesive national plan, the outlook is grim, and one man – Joe Manchin – is hastening the descent into a very dark future.

Earlier this year, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its sixth report, which stated:

It is unequivocal that climate change has already disrupted human and natural systems. Past and current development trends (past emissions, development and climate change) have not advanced global climate-resilient development (very high confidence). Societal choices and actions implemented in the next decade determine the extent to which medium and long-term pathways will deliver higher or lower climate-resilient development (high confidence). Importantly climate resilient development prospects are increasingly limited if current greenhouse gas emissions do not rapidly decline, especially if 1.5°C global warming is exceeded in the near-term (high confidence). These prospects are constrained by past development, emissions and climate change, and enabled by inclusive governance, adequate and appropriate human and technological resources, information, capacities and finance (high confidence).

Its conclusion was nothing short of apocalyptic and was unambiguous in its warnings about worsening destruction and ecological collapse:

The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. (very high confidence).

For now, though, the next steps are for the people to determine.

"Hold your children close tonight. Leave some water out for the birds. And make a plan to call your elected leaders to demand climate action, to rip out your fossil fuel furnace or to buy an e-bike. The climate crisis is getting worse, and Congress is one vote short of saving us," Stokes concluded. "We’re going to have to save ourselves."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.