Haisten Willis of the Washington Examiner reports examples of buyer’s remorse within the U.S. Senate.
Senators who delivered historic legislative wins to President Joe Biden last year are beginning to regret it.
Bipartisan complaints from the upper chamber now add to a long list of accusations that the Biden administration is exceeding the powers granted to the executive branch.
“I think they’re going to try to screw me on this, and I’m willing to go to court,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said during comments at the SAFE Summit, an industry conference focused on electrification. “I’m willing to stop it all.”
Manchin provided the crucial vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which, among other things, included a $7,500 tax credit for electrical vehicles intended to promote both green energy and American manufacturing. But some of the buy-American provisions upset Asian and European allies, and Biden later told French President Emmanuel Macron there were “tweaks” that could be made even though the bill had already been signed into law.
Those tweaks were unveiled Friday when the Treasury Department announced it would open electric vehicle tax credits to more foreign exporters’ products.
Manchin was furious, saying the “horrific” move undercuts the bill’s intent to bring manufacturing back to the United States and would “cede control” to the Chinese Communist Party.
He also threatened to sue.
“I think they’re going to try to screw me on this, and I’m willing to go to court,” Manchin said.
Just a few weeks prior, a group of Republican senators felt similar remorse. They had helped pass the CHIPS and Science Act, which was designed to promote American semiconductor manufacturing, and were upset the Biden administration stipulated on its own that companies receiving money from the bill would have to provide child care, detail their relationships with unions, share profits beyond a certain threshold with the government, and purchase supplies from domestic producers, among other requirements.
