Credit: Fox News
Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) called out Biden and his administration for “political malpractice” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Thursday. He said they were “ignoring the debt and deficit implications” of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The op-ed was titled “Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act Betrayal” and in it, Manchin argues that the Biden administration is “determined to violate and subvert the law to advance a partisan agenda that ignores both energy and fiscal security.”
Manchin wrote that the administration is ignoring the INflation Reduction Act’s support for fossil energy and attempting to redefine “domestic energy” in order to increase “clean energy spending.”
“Instead 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 said.
“The administration is attempting at every turn to implement the bill it wanted, not the bill Congress actually passed. Ignoring the debt and deficit implications of these actions as the time nears to raise the debt ceiling isn’t only wrong, it’s policy and political malpractice,” he continued.
Manchin wrote that Biden was the only person who could “rein in this extremism.”
He asked the president to implement the Inflation Reduction Act that was signed in August 2022, as it was written. he added that the Biden Administration needed to stop redefining credits and subsidies in order to save taxpayers millions in spending.
CNN’s Don Lemon spoke with Pete Buttigieg about Manchin’s op-ed during “CNN This Morning”.
“Everything that we do in this administration conforms to the law as written as passed by Congress and as signed by the president,” Buttigieg said.
“The way the administration is advancing this is designed to ensure that we have economic security,” the cabinet secretary added.
Manchin also said that Biden needed to “sit down with fiscally minded Republicans and Democrats to negotiate common-sense reforms to out-of-control fiscal policy.”
“Mr. Biden was elected to lead us all to solve problems. We can’t allow them to be made worse by ignoring them. The president has the power, today, to direct his administration to follow the law, as well as to sit down with congressional leaders and negotiate meaningful, serious reforms to the federal budget,” he wrote.
Politico reported earlier in February that Manchin was “livid” over the administration’s implantation of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Manchin called out Democrats who view the act as a good thing and as a way to fight climate change, rather than an “energy securing measure.” He said their perspective was “bulls—” and accused them of seeking to “starve” Americans “out of energy.”
A White House official said: “We have a strong and productive relationship with Senator Manchin. We are proud of the Inflation Reduction Act and our shared goals it achieves—promoting America’s energy security, strengthening supply chains, creating good-paying manufacturing jobs, and investing in energy communities and towns across America that have been left behind.”
