With Manchin and Sinema calling the shots, the outlook for an ambitious progressive agenda was dimmed. Sure enough, the months since Biden’s inauguration brought one frustration after another. Voting rights, filibuster reform, and other progressive priorities fizzled out.
The bitterest defeat was the Build Back Better plan, Biden’s signature domestic agenda, which included universal pre-K, paid family leave, free community college, Medicare expansion, and huge investments to fight climate change. It would have been the biggest progressive advance since the Great Society. But Manchin vacillated for months, first raising our hopes, then dashing them when he walked away from a deal.
But at the eleventh hour, with midterms approaching, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin suddenly announced a deal on a bill no one had heard of before. The new compromise, the Inflation Reduction Act (now that’s smart political framing!) isn’t the whole Build Back Better plan, but it preserves large parts of it. It raises corporate taxes, frees Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, fully funds the IRS to catch tax cheats, and shores up Obamacare.
Most importantly, it keeps the most critical parts: the clean-energy investments that are essential to fulfilling America’s climate commitments. It creates tax credits for solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, electric vehicles, and more. It sets a fee for methane, a potent greenhouse gas. It funds carbon capture, clean hydrogen, reforestation, coastal protection, and a federal Green Bank to invest in environmental justice for low-income communities. All told, it invests $380 billion in the future. (And yes, it will reduce inflation—by buffering consumers from the increasing scarcity and price shocks of fossil-fuel energy.)
