President Joe Biden has made plans to split his Build-Back-Better bill into two smaller bills, one of them focusing only on the climate. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the current two preventing the bill’s passage, are much more likely to support a bill containing only climate mitigation, which makes hopes of passing at least some of Biden’s plan more likely.
“In climate, I think there’s a lot of areas in climate that we agree,” Manchin said. “The only thing I’ve ever said: You cannot eliminate your way to a cleaner environment.” This paves Biden’s way for innovation, knowing more climate actions would likely be supported.
President Biden also agrees that the climate portion of the bill is likely to pass on its own, stating that, “I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now and come back and fight for the rest of it.”
The Build-Back-Better bill focuses on major infrastructure improvement, COVID-19 relief funding, social services, welfare, and mitigation of climate change. Biden hopes are the climate portion will pass sooner so that America can work on restoring the climate whilst debating the social-spending aspects of the bill.
Biden’s climate mitigation plan would address fossil fuels emissions and focus on mitigating climate disasters, similar to ones experienced by Barstow students, like tornados, over the past several months. The Washington Post discovered that over 40% of Americans were impacted by natural disasters this past year. Although some impacts won’t be irreversible for centuries, the climate crisis is extremely important and the need for clean energy investments is dire.
The climate bill would address possible alternative energy sources including wind, solar and nuclear power. Assuming Manchin would support necessary climate change actions, his support would confirm the bill, as he is the swing vote in the Senate.
The other portion of the bill is the social-spending section, which is less favored by Manchin and Sinema. Paid family leave and child tax credits are things both Manchin and Sinema either refuse to add to the bill or wish to make massive changes to, given the price of such additions.
With midterm elections coming up soon, it is critical for Democrats to pass this piece of legislation to maintain the Senate majority. Donnie Fowler, a policy adjunct professor for the University of San Francisco said, “Yes, it was fantastic to have that great stimulus win. It was fantastic to have the infrastructure win. Those were big, huge home runs, but the American people have short political memories. And in addition to all the other things happening in the world, like inflation and omicron, they’ve kind of forgotten about those runs.”
The ten-year cost of the climate bill would equal about $555 billion – just a small fraction of the original amount. Curbing climate change is the main focus of the Biden administration in this bill, but they will need Manchin and Sinema to support them in their approach.
