Unlike the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, this sort of legislation can’t be done under reconciliation rules, so Manchin’s beautiful fossil fuel bill will have to wait until the fall. (Longer refresher here, but: Bills passed under reconciliation, which allows Democrats to bypass the 60-vote filibuster, must consist only of tax and spending fixes.)
The timing of the announcement, and the secrecy with which the talks were being kept, is raising some eyebrows about whether Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, well, got played.
McConnell had tried to take a hostage earlier in the summer by saying that a long-simmering bipartisan industrial policy bill wouldn’t pass if Democrats went ahead with sweeping, partisan reconciliation bill. This was not, in our minds, McConnell’s deftest threat; much of corporate America wanted the “CHIPS” bill, as it’s informally known, to go through regardless of whether Democrats were also able to pass a bill making prescription drugs cheaper. But with a broad reconciliation bill seemingly off the table after Manchin nixed it a couple of weeks ago, the Senate passed a version of CHIPS earlier Wednesday afternoon. A few hours later, Manchin and Schumer announced they had a reconciliation deal after all.
If Manchin and Schumer played an elaborate, multiweek joke on McConnell by pretending climate and taxes were off the table until CHIPS went through: Truly, hats off. But maybe Manchin just changed his minds a couple of days ago for his usual mysterious reasons no one understands.
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