Progressive Democrats Won’t Say If They’ll Block Manchin’s Fossil Fuel Giveaway
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Joe Manchin struck a deal to fast-track approval of new gas and oil pipelines as part of a must-pass spending bill. House progressives have the ability to block it — but most won’t say whether they will.
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) looks to Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) after President Joe Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act in the State Dining Room of the White House, August 16, 2022, in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
As vast swaths of the country are being battered by climate-intensified droughts and heat waves, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) just threw a wrench into Democrats’ reported plans to fast-track approval of oil and gas pipelines as part of an unrelated spending bill: on Thursday, he pledged to vote against the proposal, even if it is included in legislation required to avert a partial government shutdown.
The open question now is whether enough other Democrats will use their power to block — rather than merely complain about — a pipeline deal that environmental groups say could detonate a climate bomb amid the intensifying ecological crisis.
Soon after Sanders’s announcement, one Democrat — Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) — told us that he would similarly vote no on a spending bill if it includes the pipeline measure.
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