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CENTRISTS UNDER PRESSURE: Democratic leaders and their allies are escalating attacks on centrists withholding support for the party’s plans for a $3.5 trillion, party-line spending bill, which they view as a once-in-a-decade opportunity to attack climate change.
The House returns from a short recess tonight to take a procedural vote that will enable the chamber to proceed on the infrastructure deal and budget framework, and it’s anyone’s guess how it will go.
Over the weekend, Speaker Nancy Pelosi released her latest threat to centrist holdouts, writing in a letter to members that “any delay to passing the budget resolution threatens the timetable for delivering the historic progress and the transformative vision that Democrats share.”
Evergreen Action, a liberal environmental group, released a statement Friday targeting centrist Democrats by name who say they will oppose the party’s budget resolution until the House passes the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
“These nine Democratic members are threatening to stand in the way of Joe Biden’s climate plan, while their own constituents are losing their lives, jobs and homes to climate disasters,” said Evergreen Action Executive Director Jamal Raad. “Whether it’s the rapidly warming Gulf of Maine in Rep. Jared Golden’s district or flooding and severe storms in Rep. Josh Gottheimer’s district, Americans need their representatives to take action to protect them from the devastation of the climate crisis.”
The League of Conservation Voters and Climate Power launched new digital ads in the nine districts represented by the centrist House members, sending the message that passing the budget resolution through the House this week is an “imperative, once-in-a-generation opportunity to fight climate change and secure middle class tax cuts, create clean energy jobs, and lower costs for working families.”
Falling on deaf ears? But the full-court press doesn’t appear to be prompting centrists to fold.
The House centrists penned a Washington Post op-ed posted last night reiterating they are “firmly opposed to holding the president’s infrastructure legislation hostage to reconciliation, risking its passage and the bipartisan support behind it.”
Key vote Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia issued a statement this morning allying with moderate colleagues in the House (his tweet linked to his previous statement “raising concerns” about passing a party-line $3.5 trillion budget).
“It would send a terrible message to the American people if this bipartisan bill is held hostage,” Manchin tweeted. “I urge my colleagues in the House to move swiftly to get this once in a generation legislation to the President’s desk for his signature.”
Fellow Centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is also reiterating that there are limits on the additional spending she’ll support, as House Democratic leaders hold back the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill she helped write.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill “is a historic win for our nation’s everyday families and employers and, like every proposal, should be considered on its own merits,” Sinema spokesperson John LaBombard told Politico. “Proceedings in the U.S. House will have no impact on Kyrsten’s views about what is best for our country – including the fact that she will not support a budget reconciliation bill that costs $3.5 trillion.”
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CHINA’S RISK CALCULUS ON AFGHANISTAN’S CRITICAL MINERALS: China faces big risks if it wants to do what no one else has and develop a vast treasure trove of critical minerals in Afghanistan that are more attractive than ever as inputs in the clean energy economy, as I report in a new story this morning.
Francis Fannon, the State Department’s top energy official in the Trump administration, sparked a conversation last week when he warned the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan could lead to the militant group cooperating with China, which already dominates the critical minerals supply chain.
China is looking to exploit America’s messy and hasty exit from Afghanistan and has fewer qualms about operating under conditions that are deemed unacceptable by Western governments and companies.
“Afghanistan has a wealth of mineral resources that is more likely to be developed under Chinese-Taliban cooperation than under the Western engagement there in the past,” said Jane Nakano, a senior fellow in the Energy Security & Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But the possibility of a partnership is remote and far off, if anything, experts say, as there appears to be too much risk from the perspective of China.
“There is a reason why U.S. companies haven’t been involved,” Dave Banks, a former international energy adviser in the Trump administration, told me. “There is just too much risk there. The question is: Will a Chinese state-owned enterprise, which has a different risk assessment, come in and make this a part of their Belt and Road initiative? I am really skeptical. It’s not as if the Taliban has a strong interest in economic development.”
BIDEN’S LATE MOVES ON NS2: The Biden administration imposed new sanctions Friday on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, but the penalties won’t stop the project.
The White House has already effectively yielded to the inevitability of the project’s construction as it looks to repair relations with its key European ally, Germany.
But it nonetheless is sanctioning a Russian ship and two Russian insurers for its work on the pipeline, the State Department said in its latest quarterly report mandated by Congress.
“We do not view the new sanctions as likely to block NS2’s completion,” the research group ClearView said in a note.
“The project will be implemented no matter what because it’s an economic issue, not a political issue, and we think that the sanctions are a wrong way to go,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a press conference Friday following a meeting with Russian President Vladmir Putin.
Turning the page: The Biden administration, though, has turned its attention to managing the fallout of the pipeline.
Amos Hochstein, recently appointed to be the State Department’s senior advisor for energy security, was tasked with an immediate focus on “implementation of measures to reduce the risks posed by the Nord Stream 2 pipeline,” according to the sanctions report submitted to Congress.
Separately, Biden issued an executive order Friday that could enable the White House to invoke “kill switch” authorities to punish Russia for energy-related coercion once the pipeline is operating, such as sanctioning natural gas deliveries to Europe.
Together, the administration’s latest moves are likely aimed at deflecting GOP criticism and giving political cover to hawkish Democrats, ClearView surmised.
CHATTERJEE’S LAST DAY: FERC Republican commissioner Neil Chatterjee announced Friday that he will depart Aug. 30., leaving the commission evenly divided 2-2 between parties.
“Serving on the Commission has been the honor of a lifetime,” tweeted Chatterjee, a nominee of former president Donald Trump who twice served as chairman.
Chatterjee’s term expired in June, but he decided to stay on to give time for the Biden administration to nominate a replacement.
The Biden administration is expected to announce its pick for a new commissioner soon.
Chatterjee, previously an energy adviser for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, became a vocal proponent of addressing climate change, signaling support for incorporating carbon pricing in electricity markets and backing orders allowing distributed energy sources and storage to compete in power markets.
Those actions contributed to the Trump administration demoting Chatterjee as chairman, as I reported at the time.
BIDEN LUKEWARM TOWARD DEMOCRATS’ CARBON TARIFFS: The White House is withholding support for Democrats’ plan to impose a tax on imports of carbon-intensive goods as part of their reconciliation package.
The White House is concerned the Democrats’ proposal will raise prices on consumer goods — fueling Republican attacks about the threat of inflation — and conflict with Biden’s pledge not to tax any American earning less than $400,000 per year, sources told Reuters for a story published Friday.
With that said, a White House official told the news outlet, “we believe that carbon border adjustments in relation to carbon-intensive goods represent a potential, useful tool.”
The Biden administration has come to accept border carbon adjustments as inevitable and potentially helpful in prodding high-polluting countries such as China to boost its climate mitigation efforts.
But it still has time to sort out its positioning on specific policy implementation, as the European Union’s proposed border carbon adjustment gives trade partners time to adjust, requiring importers to begin monitoring and reporting the carbon content of imported products in 2023 and start paying in 2026.
The Rundown
Wall Street Journal Chevron begins vaccination mandates as Covid-19 roils oil fields
Bloomberg Germany flirts with power crunch in nuclear and coal exit
Wall Street Journal Wind-turbine makers struggle to profit from renewable-energy boom
Calendar
MONDAY | AUG. 23
The House returns from recess.
