Sen. Joe Manchin vows to oppose Biden EPA nominees over emissions rule
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced Wednesday he would oppose all of President Biden’s nominees to the Environmental Protection Agency until the White House scraps a proposal to drastically cut emissions at power plants that burn fossil fuels.
“This Administration is determined to advance its radical climate agenda and has made it clear they are hellbent on doing everything in their power to regulate coal and gas-fueled power plants out of existence, no matter the cost to energy security and reliability,” Manchin, 75, said in a statement.
The chairman of the Senate committee on Energy and Natural Resources added that his panel had heard last week from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials who claimed the US would imperil its electric grid if coal was eliminated.
“If the reports are true, the pending EPA proposal would impact nearly all fossil-fueled power plants in the United States, which generate about 60[%] of our electricity, without an adequate plan to replace the lost baseload generation,” Manchin added.
The West Virginia Democrat, who has tangled with Biden over his administration’s implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, then said the move “piles on top of a broader regulatory agenda being rolled out designed to kill the fossil industry by a thousand cuts.”
“Neither the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law nor the IRA gave new authority to regulate power plant emission standards,” Manchin said. “However, I fear that this Administration’s commitment to their extreme ideology overshadows their responsibility to ensure long-lasting energy and economic security and I will oppose all EPA nominees until they halt their government overreach.”
A White House official told The Post: “The President stands by his well-qualified nominees to do the important work of the EPA which includes protecting our kids from dangerous air pollution and contaminated water.”
The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Currently, only two agency nominations are pending before the Senate
The scathing statement follows several others Manchin has lobbed at his party leader in recent months. In March, he said Biden was “determined to violate and subvert” the original intention of the Inflation Reduction Act, which was enacted last year.
“[I]nstead of implementing the law as intended, unelected ideologues, bureaucrats and appointees seem determined to violate and subvert the law to advance a partisan agenda that ignores both energy and fiscal security,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
“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.”
The law had originally been designed to generate $738 billion in revenue and cut the national deficit by $238 billion, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The White House in April also proposed sweeping auto pollution standards that would force more than two-thirds of new vehicles produced in the next decade to be electric.
Manchin has declined to say whether he will seek re-election in 2024, despite hugely popular West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announcing a campaign for Senate next year along with Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV).
