Sen. Manchin: ‘I Would Vote to Repeal My Own Bill’

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., says he would support the repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes major climate, health, and tax provisions, if the Biden administration does not change course in implementing fossil fuel investments in the legislation, NBC News reported.

Manchin told Sean Hannity on Fox that $384 billion of the Inflation Reduction Act was allocated for energy security.

“Now they’ve disregarded that completely, what was agreed upon — and they know exactly what we agreed upon,” Manchin said. “This was energy security, and you have not heard the word energy security out of their mouth since it was passed. It’s all about environment.”

“Let me make it very clear: If this administration does not honor what it said it would do, and basically continue to liberalize that … I will do everything I can in my power to prevent that from happening,” Manchin said.

“And if they don’t change, then I would vote to repeal my own bill,” he added.

The bill passed last year on a party-line vote, and Manchin’s support for its provisions could be critical in the narrowly divided Senate, NBC observed. Manchin negotiated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to pass the sweeping legislation.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which contains $369 billion in climate provisions, was a major development to mitigate the effects of climate change across the country.

But conservatives and centrists like Manchin are concerned that Biden’s expansive programs have sidelined the fossil fuel industry and added to the debt.

Manchin wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Biden administration is “determined to pursue an ideological agenda rather than confront the clear and present danger that debts and deficits pose to our nation.”

“Specifically, they are ignoring the law’s intent to support and expand fossil energy and are redefining ‘domestic energy’ to increase clean-energy spending to potentially deficit-breaking levels,” he wrote. “The administration is attempting at every turn to implement the bill it wanted, not the bill Congress actually passed.”

Manchin didn’t stop there.

“I believe the only person who can rein in this extremism is Mr. Biden,” Manchin wrote, while calling on Biden to sit down with “fiscally minded Republicans and Democrats to negotiate common-sense reforms to out-of-control fiscal policy.”