Interview: West Virginia’s Joe Manchin will keep Senate’s ‘Byrd rule’ flying

In short, the Byrd rule makes certain no extraneous provisions are snuck into a bill.

The Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough is the nonpartisan official whose position is to interpret which policies comply with the Byrd rule.

The rule was named for West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, whom Manchin replaced in a special election when the longest-serving senator in history died at the age of 92 in 2010.

“The Byrd rule makes sure that legislation stays within its guardrails or its lanes, which is basically budget-related,” Manchin said in a 44-minute interview with the Washington Examiner.

“I will defend the Byrd rule the same way I defend the filibuster,” he said. “I am not going to just set back and say, ‘Oh, well, he really didn’t mean it,’” he said of the late senator whose seat he now holds. “Sen. Byrd basically protected the institution, and that is how he protected it,” Manchin said of the rule.

Manchin said the way the Senate was intended to govern is very different than the role the House plays in legislating:
“We deliberate over the real hot topics that the House may send over to us because of whoever is control over there. They take a simple majority.”

In the House, Manchin said, if you have 218 votes, you don’t care what the other 217 want: “You can shove it down their throat. That was not the intent and purpose of the Senate.”

In the interview, Manchin detailed the role of the Senate, explained his thoughts on what does and does not belong in the COVID-19 relief bill, and explained his belief that Congress should raise taxes to pass a large infrastructure bill. He also addressed whether he’s offered the president some of his legendary moonshine and whether or not he will seek a third term in 2024.

Washington Examiner: The role of the parliamentarian. Do you have the same position on the parliamentarian as you do with the filibuster?

Sen. Joe Manchin: It’s the same. You have to understand the Byrd rule and the filibuster are one in the same. The Byrd rule just makes sure the legislature stays within its guard rails or its lane, which is basically budget-related. It was never meant to be a catchall, everything that people had pent up, basically couldn’t get passed because they didn’t want to sit and work with each other, make anything happen. So he just said, basically, “If it doesn’t sit within this guardrail with the budget process, that’s called the Byrd rule.”

Then, you have a thing called the Byrd bath. The Byrd bath, basically, she (parliamentarian) reviews everything. They (senators) go and try to convince her, well, this is fine. It fits within. And she makes the final determination says, “No, it doesn’t.” And I will defend the Byrd Rule the same as I defend the filibuster.

It’s very technical. It’s very technical and doesn’t make any sense to the average public. Most of the legislators don’t understand the process. Because until you go through it and you’re uniquely involved in it, the way I am right now, and here, I’m sitting in the seat that the rule is named after. And I’m just going to sit back and say, “OK, well, he really didn’t mean it.” Sen. Byrd basically protected the institution. That’s how he protected it.

Washington Examiner: Explain why the average voter should care about the filibuster? Or the Byrd rule? Or any of these processes.

Sen. Joe Manchin: Well, everyone should ask themselves, why does every state have two senators, no matter how big you are? Why should 40 million people only get two senators and 1,800,000 people get two senators, or 700,000 people get two senators?

So you’re in California, West Virginia, Montana, or something. Why do they get the same? That tells you everything. And that tells you why the Senate is so different. The way we govern, the way we were intended to govern, the way the Founding Fathers set us up, was very unique. Nothing like it in the world. That’s why they called it the deliberate body. We were deliberating basically over the real hot topics that the House may send to us because whoever’s in control over there. They take a simple majority. So out of 435, if you have 218 votes, you don’t care what the other 217 one want. You shove it down their throat. And that was not the intent and not the purpose of the Senate.

So they gave us the filibuster, the ability to filibuster endlessly. House doesn’t have that right. They gave us the ability to do that. Then, we morphed into cloture of 67, then cloture of 60 after the talking filibuster. Basically, it just kind of wore everybody down in 1917. So from 1789 to 1917, that was the way they did it. They would just get on a bill and not get off of it and just filibuster the living daylights something they didn’t want. And then, basically, the leadership would say, “OK, we’re off that bill. We’ll go to something else. Taking too much time.”

Now, it takes a vote. So rather than let somebody talk for days and days and days, and just hold up and stop the whole process of the Senate operating, they say, “Take a vote, and we’ll have a cloture vote.” And then, you take the cloture vote. And if you get on the bill, you get on it. If you don’t, you don’t.

They’re saying, “But don’t you think we should sit down and talk about that?” I mean, if I don’t have to sit down and negotiate with my colleagues on the other side, it’s a whole new to the process. Why do we have the Senate?

Washington Examiner: Did you foresee yourself in this position when you came into the Senate 10 years ago?

Sen. Joe Manchin: Well, no, no. They always knew. Because every time I have voted, I have voted against the nuclear option, which was basically to do away with the filibuster. OK?

Harry Reid tried to do it in 2013. And basically, he did it … So Harry did it and did away with all appointments from the secretarial levels. I don’t have a problem with that one, because I never did think that should come under the 60-vote threshold. Because will and pleasure is will and pleasure.

When I was governor, I used to go to the state Senate and bring people into the government that I knew had the skillsets. And unless they were something nefariously done that I didn’t know about and the background check showed they should not be in public service. But if they were qualified, I would ask the State Senate, “Please, let me put a team around me.” If we fail, if we mess up. We all get thrown out at the same time. They’re not protected anything, except the will of me. The governor basically appoint. So the chief executive, so the president has a right, and I’ve been very differential to whoever the president, Republican or Democrat, putting their team together. But now, sometimes I vote against, if I think the person is toxic or is not qualified. So, that’s the only time I’ve ever done that, and we’ll just see what happens.

You asked me about my role. Did I ever see myself in this role? Well, we’ve not been in a 50-50 tie for quite a while. I think two, two was the last time. And that was under Tom Daschle and Trent Lott. Those two got along very well together and tried to work things out. They did a good job at trying to navigate those. And so far, at least Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer have worked on that. But Mitch McConnell wouldn’t even agree to the rules of how we’re going to run the impeachment or the rules of how we were going to set up the committees until he felt that he knew that I wasn’t going to blow up the filibuster and ruin the institution and Kyrsten Sinema. So now, the whole reconciliation is a way that bothers me, and it bothers me starting out our legislative … the Congress, the 117th Congress, starting a reconciliation without trying to start out a normal process. But we are where we are.

Washington Examiner: Where are things with the COVID bill?

Sen. Joe Manchin: It’s moving. The president’s working it very hard. He believes in it, and I’ve spoken to him about it. And I said, “We have to look at the figures.” We want to see where the need is. And the bottom line is, if you look at what need is still out there that we haven’t basically covered. And I think the hardest thing right now, Salena, is getting accurate figures of exactly how much money. I mean, when you look at the different five bills that we’ve passed, I believe that’s well over $5 trillion. How much has actually been put into circulation, where checks have been sent out, or where the Treasury basically has put money into the process?

And then, it would tell you where we are. And I’ve said all along, this is a healthcare crisis. This is not an economic crisis. It could fall into that, but all indications shows that we’re not going to fall in economic crisis because our banks are doing better than ever. They’re all profitable. Stock market is higher than ever. And if you recall back when we had the crash, the financial crash back in 2008 … That’s the first thing that went down was the banks and stock market dropped to single digits. So everything was going awry. People were selling off assets because of devalue. Everything was devalued. That’s not the case now. Our savings are greater than ever.

Now, the pandemic has caused a lot of hardship and stress, but it’s to basically certain targeted people that who it hit the hardest, mostly on the lower end of the totem pole, if you will. And people that could not afford to not have a job or a paycheck got hit the hardest. Those are the people we should be targeting. So anything I have said, whatever we do should be targeted directly to those in need.

If there’s a state that really has fallen on hard times or a community, then there should be direct aid for them. But there has to be a proven need. Don’t just send everybody a check because I’ll guarantee you, the line will be long. OK? And you will not get the facts unless they have the proof, the facts that the Treasury, that this is what I’ve lost. This is why I cannot put my people in any more burden. I’m going to lose essential services. Show me all that has happened. But as of right now, that’s not been the case. And we’re just trying to target, be a little bit more precise of how we invest more COVID expense money, more COVID dollars.

Washington Examiner: Is there a component in this bill or is this something you’re advocating in terms of mental health and suicide and addiction? Is there anything in there that addresses that?

Sen. Joe Manchin: So, we do have, we’ve had in there for opiate addiction. Yes, we have for addiction. And addiction and mental health has been part of it. Thank God that we’ve all come to the realization that mental health and addiction pretty much goes hand in hand to a certain extent, and people need help. And we’re trying to do that to make sure that we do have that. Also, we’re trying to check with the centers. If we really wanted to do our job and do it well, take the time to talk to the people on the front line. All the resource centers and basically all the addiction centers. Are they getting the assistance they need? Are they getting, first of all, is all their staff? Their essential workers, are they getting vaccinated? Were they first to get vaccinated? Are they getting protective gear? PPE?

Have we done everything we can for people on the front line of society that’s doing the tough jobs. And that’s the thing you ought to be looking at, but you just can’t continue to throw money at things that basically for the sake of saying we spend X amount of dollars. Well, you might’ve spent X amount of dollars, but how much good did you get out of it? That’s what we want to look at. And right we just put out $900 billion, and I’m not hesitant about helping the president do what he thinks needs to be done but we would like to see a little bit verification of that. That’s all. And you understand when we go through this process, it’s not a regular process that we go through. Normally, if we were going to do this, there would be basically committees that were meeting, having hearings, having testimonies. And then, basically, there would be a process on the floor that would be debated. That’s the way the process should work to make sure that we’ve covered every angle so the public knows. Right now, the public is only seeing what’s been given to them because there’s been no process and a lot of the figures and facts we don’t have.

Washington Examiner: Minimum wage in the COVID bill are you concerned about that number and the impact it has on the small business?

Sen. Joe Manchin: Well, first of all, I don’t think this is the place for that. This is not within the guidelines of the guard rails that we talked about, which is basically the budget reconciliation. I’m sure there’ll be a push for that, and we’ll have to see how the parliamentarian rules on it. But first of all, let me make very clear that $7.25 is extremely too low. It should not be $7.25.

In West Virginia it is $8.75. And I truly believe that if a person gets up in the morning and goes to work and they work 40 hours a week, they work 50 weeks out of the year. They should be above the poverty guidelines at the end of the year. They should not be still in poverty trying to make a go of it. And I believe the $11 figure for a base minimum wage for our country gets a person above the poverty guidelines, family of three. It gets them above that. Then, we’d index it based on inflation and GDP. You can index it from there to make sure that we don’t fall back into that long period of no changes whatsoever.

But we’re not preventing any state from going to $15. A lot of states have already gone to $15 because they have large metropolitan economies. A lot of cities have gone to $15. That’s fine. They’re able to do that. But a lot of the rural areas that have little small operators, it’s very difficult, and basically, even the CBO, congressional budget offices, we’re going to lose 900,000 jobs. I can’t afford to lose another job in West Virginia. But with that, I want people to be able to have more money until they find another skill set or have a skill set that produces a better pay. There should be a minimum of $11.

Washington Examiner: So you’re the center of attention for a lot of things, in particular, energy. And energy is the center of the conversation right now in this country. Not only with the executive orders that impacted the Keystone pipeline, which meant jobs, but also fracking and oil rig drilling on federal lands, but also what’s happening in Texas. So can you unpack all three issues?

Sen. Joe Manchin: Let’s start when you started out saying you’re in the center. OK? The only the reason I’m in the center is because I am in the middle. I vote very independently. I’ll vote if it’s a Republican idea that makes sense, I vote for it. So I’m not controlled by any side, or I’m not intimidated by any side. I’ve had 10 years of voting in the Senate. Basically, they know that I am that type of a person. One of the most, well, I think out of 535 I’m the most moderate centrist that votes in the middle more than anybody else. So basically, OK, Joe becomes a wild card. He can’t be controlled. Now, the Democrats have control. What are we going to do? Let’s put some good, commonsense stuff out there, and you’ll see me vote for it. But if you take the process away to where all the hundred centers can participate, I’m not for that. I want bipartisanship to work. So I’m always pushing that.

Next of all, where we go with energy, I’m all for innovation. I’m not for elimination. So the people that say we’re going to eliminate oil and we’re going to eliminate gas, you can’t be energy independent and be a superpower of the world if you eliminate your base load fuels. You can’t do it. You can innovate your way with technology that will move you to hydrogen or fusion or different things, but you can’t do it by just arbitrarily eliminating something. And that’s all I have said. There’s not a person in West Virginia that wants to drink dirty water or breathe dirty air. So we’re all for a cleaner environment. And I believe that the climate is real, but it’s called global climate. It’s not West Virginia or North American climate. It’s the entire globe. So let’s look and see how we clean up all over the globe.

And we can do that by the new technology through innovation, and use our trading policy and caveat to the greatest consumer market in the world to other countries if they’ll use the technology that we basically develop. There’s so many ways to do it, to help the world clean up. But humans have to understand, we have a responsibility. You know, we have contributed greatly to the harm of our climate, but we have the ability and the responsibility to do something in a responsible way. And just eliminating it, thinking other countries will follow suit … Well, I can tell you, in the early 1900s, 1930, my grandparents didn’t really care how they got electricity to get their first washing machine or their first refrigerator. They weren’t worried about what happened when they plugged in and used that electricity.
Well, there’s people all over the world doing that today. They might be a century behind us, but they’re going to be catching up rapidly. We’ve got to help them because now we do have the technology that they can use all the energy they have in their backyard, which we did. Whether it be the gas, the oil, the coal, whatever they may have. And they will move to the renewables, and they’ll move to the new fuels of the future. But there has to be a country such as us that’s willing to do and invest in and make sure that that technology is provable.

Washington Examiner: Any thoughts about what happened in Texas in terms of how do we prevent something like that happening. You’ve seen that people have died. You see people with their pipes burst, sleeping inside with layers of clothing on or outside with their cars on. How do we, what do we learn from this?

Sen. Joe Manchin: Texas has its own grid system. They’re not regulated by FERC. But that being said, having a reliable grid system, they’ve never come under this type of grips of the climate change. Everybody thinks that climate change is everything getting hot and melting away. Now, climate change can be everything frozen over, and you can’t move. So they’re seeing a different … Building codes have to prevent for this. It might not happen but if it does happen, it’s catastrophic, which is what we’re seeing. So they need to look at the whole apparatus of how they build, how they do things, how they prepare for this. And I think other parts of the country is going to do the same. They have to. We’ve been doing it for quite some time in Pennsylvania and West Virginia because we’ve been in the grips of weather before. Our windows are different. Our installation, our R-factors are different. Basically, our pipes and how we insulate and do things are different. We prepare for that. We have backup generation. A lot of people have independent generators or private generators for their own homes and things of that sort. They have backup power support. There’s just so many things.
We’re going to do a whole thing on grid reliability within two weeks in our energy committee. I’m calling a hearing on that and I think it would be very eye-opening. What went wrong? What happened? What collapsed?

Washington Examiner: The president of the United Steelworkers said the other day he’s very concerned that this is going to be a jobless recovery. Do you share those concerns?

Sen. Joe Manchin: Well, it sure shouldn’t be a jobless recovery. If we spent $5 trillion already, and we’re not going to have jobs coming out of this, what a colossal failure that would be.

That was out of the last administration, and now, we have the Biden administration that wants to spend another $1.9 trillion, almost $2 trillion. No, it has to come back, and it’s willing to come back. I think it’s ready to come back. All indications saying it’s going to take off like a rocket. We’ve got to be careful of how we roll this thing out, how we roll out, and it can’t be all the … The switch is not going to be turned on and now, OK, everything’s back to the way it was. That won’t happen. People will work differently than they did before. The demands will be a little bit different. There’s going to be a lot of relocation, I believe, going on. People working now finding out that they can work differently than they ever did before and still make a living. You’re in your home right now. You [pointing to me] do this an awful lot, and you’ve basically transitioned from a work setting to basically a very mobile setting that you’re in now that you can do whenever you want and wherever you want.

Washington Examiner: Infrastructure bill?

Sen. Joe Manchin: There’s never been a recovery without it. Never been a recovery without infrastructure.

Washington Examiner: Are you going to be a big advocate for an infrastructure bill? Not just roads and bridges, what about sewer lines, water lines, broadband? Is that something you’re going to be an advocate for?

Sen. Joe Manchin: Well, let me tell you one thing. I’m going to do everything. I will. You talk about going big. We’re going to pay for it. I’m willing to pay for it, but we’re going to have to put revenue. We have to have a tax in order to pay for this infrastructure. And when you start talking of all that will be spent, I can tell you one thing: A pothole doesn’t have a D or an R’s name on it. It’ll bust your tire and tear your front end up. It don’t care who you are. If you’re on a bridge and it falls apart, it doesn’t care if I got Democrats or Republicans on top of me, OK? But the bottom line in West Virginia, we have got to have connectivity. That’s the first and foremost thing for infrastructure for us. We’ve got to repair all the broken things that we have, which whether it be our waterlines, shorelines.

Just think if we invested $5 trillion that we’ve already invested in less than one year, $5 trillion have gone into this economy to try to prop everyone up that’s really hit some hard times and businesses trying to keep them afloat so they can come back when this pandemic is over. That kind of money infusion into infrastructure is a total game changer for jobs. FDR did it in the ’30s. He didn’t send checks to everybody. He basically created jobs for everybody, OK? Eisenhower did it in the ’50s with the interstate system. I mean, it was a total massive undertaking, and ever since then, we have not, I don’t know why, we want to reinvent the wheel and think we can find something different.

The bottom line is infrastructure is the bedrock of who you are. Do you have the necessities that you need whether it be water, whether it be sewage, and whether it be power, reliable, dependable, and affordable, and now connectivity? Those are the basic bedrocks of what we do and how we do it. You just don’t throw the whole kitchen sink at it, but I can tell you it’s going to be a massive program to do it. We always thought we were hearing $1 trillion. We throw trillions around now like it’s nothing. I never heard the word trillions being used before. Never before. The biggest one I ever heard was what, $700 or 800 billion that we used for the stimulus back in 2009 that Obama did. That was big, and now we’re over $5 trillion.

Washington Examiner: Do you think that there’s an appetite for the tax increase that will go with that or it…?

Sen. Joe Manchin: Oh, absolutely not. There’ll be people that say, “Oh no, we want to cut.” What are you going to cut? Tell me how you’re going to cut. And don’t tell me whether you’re a Democrat or Republican now all of a sudden you became Mr. Conservative. We’ve got $28 trillion of debt. The Republicans have put more debt in a quicker faster time under Trump than any other time except World War II, and the Democrats are not much better at times about it. You follow me? But we have balanced the budget in Democrat times. It’s hard to believe, but we have. So you have to get your financial house in order. My grandfather always told me, he says, “Let me tell you, Joe, uncontrolled debt, unmanaged debt, will create a coward out of you. You’ll make cowardly decisions if you have uncontrolled debt.” That means debt that you have … The old saying rob Peter to pay Paul. You shuffle things back and forth to keep them afloat, it’ll catch you sooner or later, and the country will do that, and then you have inflation.

So there’s a lot of talk about overheating the economy to where basically we don’t have the workforce to produce and the demand goes and the prices start skyrocketing, interest rates go up, you got to control it. Before you know, you’ve got a runaway train. It all happens in clockwork-type thing, and it basically does when there’s so much money, pent-up money, that people want to spend and there’s not enough products to supply the pent-up demand, and then prices start inflating and you’re paying inflated prices for values that aren’t there. And they said we got to slow this economy down so inflation goes up, interest rate goes up. It is a Catch-22.

Washington Examiner: How’s your relationship with the president?

Sen. Joe Manchin: I think he’s a wonderful person. I really do. I like him.
We’ve met. We’ve met in person. We have met.

Washington Examiner: Did you give him any moonshine?

Sen. Joe Manchin: Not yet. I don’t think he partakes in that.

Washington Examiner: Are you going to run for reelection?

Sen. Joe Manchin: I have no idea. I got four years. That’s a long time. Let’s see how this works out this next two years, I’ll tell you then.