Manchin's climate rebuff adds to Congress' troubled track record

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) brought Democrats’ hopes for major climate change legislation crashing down by rejecting efforts to include about $300 billion in tax incentives for a raft of clean energy sources in the party’s reconciliation package, H.R. 5376 (117).

The collapse of what would have been the biggest climate-related spending measures in U.S. history is the latest failure by Congress to address the pollution that is driving up global temperatures and causing devastating droughts, powerful storms and catastrophic flooding.

Lawmakers have long pressed for action in Congress to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But even when Democrats have held power, they have failed to approve measures on the scale of what scientists say is needed to fight the problem — and they have faced a unified front of opposition from Republicans.

"The problem is not Manchin. The problem is not the Republicans. The problem is the majority of the U.S. Senate doesn't give a damn about climate change," Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) said in an interview.

While Congress has moved some measures that helped stimulate technologies that would help reduce fossil fuel use, it’s history is marked with notable failures. Here are some of the biggest fits and starts over the years in the Hill's efforts to deal with climate change:

STUMBLE: Senate’s 95-0 rejection of the Kyoto pact on climate change (1997)

The Senate unanimously voted 95-0 on a resolution, dubbed the Byrd–Hagel resolution, to declare the United States should not sign on to any protocol or treaty agreement that mandated new emission reduction commitments unless it also mandated commitments from developing countries.

The vote was a reaction to the Kyoto Protocol, the international pact negotiated by the Clinton administration under which several industrialized nations agreed to binding carbon emissions reductions. It was also a shot at China and India, which did not have to reduce emissions under the deal, and it effectively prohibited the U.S. from ratifying the protocol.

PROGRESS: Congress passes energy policy bill and its update (2005-2007)

Congress’ passage of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 marked one of the body’s most ambitious energy bills in a generation, in part tightening energy efficiency standards and expanding tax incentives and loan guarantees for energy technologies.

It also authorized the creation of the Renewable Fuel Standard, the program that requires the blending of ethanol and other biofuels into the nation’s transportation fuels, an effort to reduce the dependence on petroleum and cut carbon emissions, though experts continue to argue whether those declines were actually achieved.

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 further amended the Clean Air Act to expand the program.

PROGRESS: Democrats pass Obama’s stimulus bill (2009)

President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in response to the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression, provided the biggest boost to clean energy ever, a feat that Washington hasn’t matched since.

The legislation provided $90 billion for clean energy, including funding to develop renewable power, build transmission lines, weatherize buildings and manufacture zero-carbon vehicles. It’s credited with helping to drive down the cost of wind and solar power, making renewables competitive with fossil fuels and setting the sectors on a fast growth path over the next decade.

STUMBLE: Democrats fail to pass cap-and-trade (2010)

Even with the benefit of a Senate supermajority, Democrats failed to pass a cap-and-trade bill that was Obama’s top legislative effort to combat climate change. The bill would have set a nationwide limit on carbon emissions and let companies trade permits for the right to pollute, similar to a federal program used for other pollutants.

The House narrowly passed the bill, but it was never taken up in the Senate thanks to opposition from moderate Democrats and all Republicans. (Manchin, who was running for the Senate that year, also shot the bill with a rifle in a campaign ad.) House Democrats who voted for it suffered massive losses in the subsequent midterms, when Republicans took control of the chamber.

The proposal represented the first time Congress sought to pass a carbon pricing bill, and the policy has proven to be too politically toxic for lawmakers to seriously pursue ever since despite it being the favored approach of economists.

PROGRESS: Congress passes bipartisan energy innovation bill (2020)

Manchin teamed up with GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Ark.) his frequent legislative partner and predecessor as chair of the Energy Committee, to lead passage of the Energy Act of 2020.

The bill, considered the most comprehensive update to U.S. energy law in a decade, authorized more than a dozen clean energy demonstration projects, including for long-duration storage, advanced nuclear reactors, carbon capture, and direct air capture.

PROGRESS: Congress passes bipartisan infrastructure bill (2021)

Biden’s most significant legislative achievement so far mainly poured money into traditional roads and bridges, but the administration also touted it as a climate bill because it funded expansions to the power grid to boost renewables along with the federal buildout of a charging network for electric vehicles.

The bill also fully funded the clean energy demonstration projects authorized in the 2020 innovation bill.

And it created a program to combat methane emissions by employing oil workers to plug leaking “orphan” oil and gas wells, and established the first-ever credit program providing subsidies to keep alive struggling zero-carbon nuclear plants.

STUMBLE: Build Back Better (2021-22)

The package of Biden administration and Democratic priorities has shrunk dramatically in the stop-start negotiations that have lasted nearly a year, largely because of pressure from Manchin. In opposing the energy and climate measures, he cited soaring inflation and the need to focus on growing oil and gas production to lower energy costs, but he left open the possibility of revisiting the measure in September.