Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) appeared on every major Sunday political talk show to defend his surprise energy, healthcare, and tax deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) following criticism from both sides of the aisle.
The West Virginia senator, who unveiled the Inflation Reduction Act on Wednesday, completed a virtual version of a “full Ginsburg” on Sunday by appearing on the five largest weekend news programs: CNN’s State of the Union, Fox News Sunday, ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation, and NBC’s Meet the Press. The phrase is named for Bill Ginsburg, who served as Monica Lewinsky’s attorney during the scandal surrounding her affair with then-President Bill Clinton. Ginsburg became the first person to appear on all five of the major Sunday shows in one day back in 1998, when the top story of that week involved his client.
Depending on who is counting, Manchin became the 30th or 31st person to complete the “full Ginsburg” on Sunday. Some have debated whether President Barack Obama’s September 2009 media blitz can be counted, as he appeared on a Univision news program instead of Fox News Sunday for his fifth interview.
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In all five of Manchin’s appearances Sunday, the centrist Democrat stood by his Inflation Reduction Act — a scaled-back alternative to Build Back Better, a sweeping social spending and green energy bill that the senator killed last year when he objected to its price tag and raised concerns over inflation. The message was simple: This new legislation would decrease inflation and not raise taxes on average people while still tackling parts of Democrats’ energy, healthcare, and tax reform agendas.
Manchin, who represents one of the deepest-red states in the nation, opted to do a “full Ginsburg” to get his messaging on the bill out before Democratic leadership, whose approach would be sure to anger West Virginia voters, according to Politico Playbook.
The senator also wanted to promote the deal’s $369 billion in proposed investments for green energy and climate programs, which he said Sunday would reduce high energy costs affected by inflation.
“You’ve got to produce,” Manchin said on Fox News Sunday. “And if you’re going to produce, you have to be able to have more energy so you can get the gas prices down, have more production and more manufacturing, so you get people working and not having layoffs and things of that sort. It’s going to take some investments.”
The red-state Democrat, who has become a deciding vote in the current 50-50 Senate, has faced continued, public criticism from the left wing of his party for blocking most of their policy proposals. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Manchin had “sabotaged the president’s agenda” while appearing on ABC’s This Week in mid-July. There is much irony in Manchin, the senator accused of being too cozy with the oil and coal industry, being the one to deliver among the most significant carbon reduction bills in U.S. history.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) raised the prospect of a climate deal to Manchin around that time, referencing Democratic lawmakers who had become critics of the West Virginia senator, according to the Washington Post.
“There are folks in our party who are saying all sorts of terrible things about you, who believe you were stringing us along for a year and that you were never going to come to a deal because of your state or because of your conflicts of interest,” a source quoted Coons as saying. “I can’t think of a better way for you to prove them all wrong than to sign off on a bold climate deal. Prove every critic wrong.”
“It would be like hitting a homer in the bottom of the ninth, wouldn’t it?” Manchin reportedly replied.
Asked on CNN’s State of the Union about all the attacks on him from progressive lawmakers and activists, Manchin told host Jake Tapper: “I take none of that personally at all. I understand the frustrations they had and everything, but I don’t look at it as politics. I didn’t look at — as a Democrat or I had an obligation, a responsibility because I have a D by my name.”
Manchin defended the secrecy of his negotiations with Schumer on CBS’s Face the Nation after being asked about blindsiding members of the GOP as well as his own party with the surprise reveal of the bill.
Responding to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) calling the deal an “absolute declaration of political warfare,” Manchin said it was “such a shame” that his Senate colleague was upset at his hiding of the bill before explaining his rationale for the secrecy.
“John Cornyn is a good friend of mine. He’s such a good man,” he said, going on to add that he “never thought” his deal with Schumer “would come to fruition,” so he “never spoke with anybody” as negotiations pressed on.
“I never told anybody that I wasn’t going to do something,” Manchin said. “If I had a chance to fix the energy policy of the United States of America, and I didn’t do it, shame on me. If I had the chance to reduce the amount of inflation people in West Virginia and across the country are enduring right now, shame on me.”
He added that he was hoping Republicans would “cool off” and “take a good look at the bill.”
Staying on message about the positives of the legislation, he added: “This is a $400 billion investment bill, and everything my Republicans talked about reducing the amount of debt that we have, we’re paying down $300 billion — first time in 25 years. They gotta like that. And next of all, they wanted more energy, I want more energy, we’re going to be producing more energy. There’s an agreement that we’re going to be drilling and doing more than we can to bring more energy to the market that reduces prices. They like that.”
The senator also said he didn’t tell fellow Democrats about the negotiations either, which he said was “because they were frustrated that nothing happened for so long on the other — I never could get the Build Back Better.”
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), a critical swing vote necessary for the bill’s passage, has yet to comment on the legislation. She has also given no public indication about how she will vote when the Senate gathers to vote on amendments to the bill next week.
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Pressed on NBC’s Meet the Press about securing Sinema’s support for the legislation, Manchin called the Arizona senator “a friend of mine” and touted their work relationship before arguing that she had indirect input in creating the bill.
The deal, he told the network, was the culmination of “things that everyone has worked on over the last eight months or more. And she basically insisted that ‘no tax increases,’ we’ve done that. She was very, very adamant about that, and I support and I agree with her.”
“I would like to think she would be favorable towards it, but I respect her decision,” he added. “She’ll make her own decision based on the contents.”
