Sen. Joe Manchin may not be up for re-election in next weeks mid-terms, but the divisive Democrat from deeply red West Virginia is still making his voice heard.
Manchin gained fame (or infamy with his more liberal colleagues) over the past year when he strayed from his partys line and refused to sign off on one of the Biden administrations flagship legislative proposals.
In December 2021, he alienated more than a few of his colleagues by refusing to sign President Joe Bidens flagship Build Back Better bill, which proposed $3.5 trillion in spending for climate change and social policy. Congressional Republicans unanimously opposed the legislation. Months later, Manchin finally got on board with Democrats and their Inflation Reduction Acta pared down version of the plan.
Over the years, Manchin has complained about what he sees as a leftward slide in his party, advocating for a more centrist and collaborative approach with Congressional Republicans. And a firm believer in old-school bipartisanship like Manchin doesnt only think cross-party compromise is possible, he says its necessary. Rising inflation, record-high national debt, and energy security are challenges that affect everyone, Manchin says, and fixing those problems requires policymakers to move away from extreme views.
On Thursday, Manchin appeared virtually at Fortunes CEO Initiative conference in Palm Beach, Fla., where he spoke with Fortune Media CEO Alan Murray about bipartisanship in a heated political climate, what happened after he rejected the Build Back Better bill, and why he doesnt want campaign contributions in politics.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity
Fortune: As everyone knows, you provided the critical vote to the Inflation Reduction Act. You opposed it up until the end and then you supported it and made it possible. Tell us what happened there. Why did you change your mind? Why in the end did you support it?
Sen. Manchin: First of all, Im for an all-in energy policy. What I was against, and Im still against, is Build Back Better. It was a very wide-ranging expansion of not only climate and not only energy, but it was basically geopolitical. We were changing everything in our social responsibilities.
Youre talking about the bigger bill?
That was Build Back Better, that was $3.5 trillion. Trust me, it was always trillions and trillions of dollars, and I could never get there. In December of 2021, I said Im sorry, Mr. President, I cant do it. And from that, I believed truly it would change who we are as a country.
As John Kennedy said: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for it. And right now weve got people asking, How much more can my country do for me? Thats not how you remain the superpower of the world. So I couldnt get there. But I saw what was happening with the Ukraine War and Putin weaponizing energy the way he did. Automatically, we started turning towards removing sanctions from Venezuela and from Iran, and we were looking at Saudi Arabia and OPEC to do things that we couldnt do for ourselves because we cut down our production and had not ramped back up.
So I said, we got to do something with energy. They said: Well, if you understand the energy policies and youre an energy chairman, why dont you write the bill? I told Senator Schumer: Chuck, I will, but Im not sure you or the caucus are going to like it because its going to be a balanced approach.
I believe that we have to have energy independence to be energy secure and to remain a superpower. We do it cleaner and better than anybody else. So I want a very robust fossil fuel industry thats putting out the energy that we need and doing it with the cleanest of technology and oversight. But also we can walk and chew gum. So we invested $360 billion in the clean technologies of the future that we have to mature. Thats what this bill did. So we took $3.5 trillion of spending and with the Inflation Reduction Act we reversed that to up to $400 billion of investment over 10 years. Thats a big change.
We had Larry Summers with us just a few minutes ago. There have been press reports that a conversation with him helped convince you that this wouldnt exacerbate inflation. Is that accurate?
Larry is a very dear friend and I consult with him quite a bit. We talk back and forth and I value his input, his experience, and his oversight. But with that, sometimes we have some different approaches to different problems and challenges, and we go through that. But this is one time that I was sure: We went from spending to investing, and with investing there should be a return.
There is more activity in the United States of America because we are where its going to happen. If youre going to promote hydrogen, if youre going to mature hydrogen, this is the country to come to. If youre doing geothermal, if youre doing nuclear, this is the country to come to.
Senator, thats a strong argument, but I saw a Morning Consult poll that shows that the people of West Virginia arent necessarily buying that, and that your approval rating may be down by 10 points or more. How do you feel about that?
Well, I knew that going in. If Im doing this simply for my poll ratings and my political future, then Im in the wrong job and I shouldnt be here.
Everyone should be looking at that: What can you do for your country? I was against Build Back Better because it was bad for our country. We threw too much money in this market and were seeing the results of that. We did it with good intentions, but we just overdid it because politics started intervening and taking the lead.
So I could not be for BBB. And I didnt do it to hurt Democrats or help Republicans. But when I agreed to the Inflation Reduction Act, why would I voluntarily bring all that heat on me again if I didnt think it was good for my country?
I just want to get you to repeat that, because its so refreshing to hear. You knew when you voted for the Inflation Reduction Act that it would hurt you in the state of West Virginia?
Absolutely. I knew it because my state is extremely red, but my state understands who I am. They dont look at me and say: Thats Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia. They just say: Thats Joe. Hes been our governor. Hes been Secretary of State, and now hes our senator. I dont look at what Democrats and Republicans sayI have no interest in that. I say: Can I go home and explain it?
I knew this bill here would be politicized because it was only passed with reconciliation by Democrats only. But everything in the Inflation Reduction Act is things that I worked on with my Republican counterpartsmy friendsover the last five or more years. But because we only had reconciliation, which was Democrats only, it became politicized. So Republicans had to be opposed to it.
Ill tell you, ask the industry. Ask Exxon Mobil, ask Shell, ask the big people. Ask them what were trying to do. You have to build infrastructure. And now the final straw with this is if we can get permitting reforms done? You shouldnt take five or 10 years to meet the challenges and the needs of America when the civilized world takes one to three years.
It now looks like politics is going to prevent that permitting reform for new oil and gas infrastructure and power transmission lines that youve been pushing from happening.
I dont know. Some friends were mad at me about that. They were mad at me because we passed something. They were mad at me because they said that was a surprise. There wasnt a Democrat who knew I was working on a bill, because it was just me and my staff who were working on the energy portion of the Inflation Reduction Act. I talked to Schumer and the White House knew that we were working on it, but no one else.
I said: Ill deny anything you say because I dont think you are going to accept. I think this bill is such a balanced bill but this administration was going too far to the left. They were being pulled to the left, which I thought was wrong for our country, and we had to get back to the center.
Youve been a leading advocate of bipartisan action in Congress. Youve had some successes but its been a big uphill battle, and we have a very divisive election going on when we vote next Tuesday in the midterms. What do you think the opportunity for bipartisan action is going to be when Congress comes back?
I would say that the American public is going to demand results. You cant just be saying that the Democrats are horrible, or that the Republicans are horrible. Sooner or later, youre going to say: Wait a minute. When are you going to do something for the country?
When you say sooner or lateris it going to be sooner or is it going to be later? Because that seems to be what were doing right now.
Thats exactly whats happening right now. And youre seeing this villainization in this political process were going through right now with this midterm election. But you still cant get anything done, and thats why I defended the filibuster [the procedure that lets senators block bills that lack at least 60 votes]. You get rid of the filibuster in the Senate and youve lost democracy as we know it because you will not have a check and balance on the executive branch of government.
If you go back to 2016 and 2017, Donald Trump wasnt aware of how this process worked. He kept saying to then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: You got 54 Republicans, why dont you just pass whatever we want? And to Mitch McConnells credit, he said: No thats not how the institution works.
The institution is basically a check and balance, because if you get all Democrats, then you could push through things that we couldnt stop.
The Senate is the most unusual body in the world. The brilliance of our founding fathers is only holding by a thread, but its still holding.
But bipartisan action used to happen on a fairly regular basis. Why has it gotten so hard and so much worse? And what could be done to make it better?
Right now, you cant go out to dinner with a lobbyist. They look at that as a bad thing, as if they were peddling influence. Democrats and Republicans used to come together, and in those days they would actually live in Washington. We wouldnt go home every weekend. They wouldnt pay all this money theyre paying for us to go home every Thursday night and come back Monday. Those things have changed because theres no camaraderie right now.
Its hard to say no to your friends. My father always said: If you have to say no, say it with a tear in your eye, because it has to hurt you as much as it hurts your friend. Thats not whats happening anymore, theres no tears being shed right now in Washington.
So where do we go from here? First of all, earmarks [when Congress sets aside funding for a specific local project] are horrible. Theyre just basically bridges to nowhere. If you do earmarks properly, it makes all of us work together and help each other. You know the needs of your state better than anybody else. But you should be able to make that public well in advance, so you can have public comment on where you want to direct money to in your state and why the need is there.
That makes all of our colleagues work with us. It makes us say: I really need this. Weve got a hospital that just cant make it. Its in a rural area. Can you help me? And we can help. But we need to put that out on the internet, let the people from your state comment on that and see if its really what your state needs. Theres ways to do this, but we are trying to be too pure and too goody-two-shoes.
Its the lubrication that makes the process work.
There you go. Weve eliminated that from the process because they found out someone abused this or someone abused that. We have people in the environmental communities, and their definition of climate change is basically elimination. Eliminate every drop of oil, every MCF of gas, every lump of coal. My definition of global climate change is this: Use more fossil fuels from Americawhich is cleaner with all of the oversight that we haveand replace the dirty fuels in the world.
Senator, part of the problem here is that most of your colleagues in the Senate and the House dont ever have to run in a general election where they have to talk to people from both parties. They run critical elections or primaries where they only talk to true believers.
Well, my state is the reddest state in the United States of America, along with Wyoming. President Trump has won my state two times in a row by 40 points. Now, you can imagine me, with a D next to my name, and theres always been guilt by association, but Ive never seen it raised to this level.
Theres guilt by association because you have a D or an R by your name. And I can tell you, that D is not anything that would prevent me from trying to take a good idea from you even if you have an R by your name and say: Thats great. Lets do it.
But thats what were dealing with right now. Its even gotten so bad its become guilt by conversation. Weve gone past guilt by association. Weve gone to guilt by conversation.
You cant talk to people on the other side.
Very seldom. And if youre seen doing that, you seem like youre compromising and that youre weak. That is as crazy as Ive ever seen it, and Im not going to partake in that.
So what changes? When I go out and talk to people I dont talk badly about the Republicans because theyre all my friends. I want to work with them and Ive always felt that way. When I was governor, I used to bring them over to the governors mansion to have dinner with them all the time. I wanted them to be part of this process. But now all of a sudden we cant have a conversation, we cant have dinner, and we cant socialize with each other. Thats ridiculous.
The worst thing can happen to me is I get defeated, and I get sent home. Thats a pretty good consolation for doing what you think is right.
You do have an election coming up in two years. Why run again?
Im not sure what Im going to do in two years. Ive been at this for over 40 years now. But anytime that I can help, and if I can be something positive, Republicans always know one thing: They have a Democrat who has never given any money to any of their opposition. If I have a sitting colleague and a Republican is running for reelection, I will not give money to any Democrats running against him. I think its wrong. Let the people in that state choose who they want and Ill work with them. They know theyve got a friend.
What are the issues that you think have a shot of bipartisan action in the next two years? Where can you get the two sides together, if anywhere?
I mean, this inflation. And we all have blame to share here. When we first started, no one knew about COVID. The only thing I ever knew about a pandemic is my great-grandfather who died in 1918 of influenza when he came to America from Italy. So we didnt know what to expect.
People started saying then: When we had the financial crisis of 2008 to 2009, President Obama and the legislature didnt put enough money in to get us out of that funk as quickly as they should have to help us recover. They wanted to make sure we didnt do that again.
We had two things hitting us. We had a health crisis and the possibility of a financial crisis. We wanted to prevent both of those. We should give President Trump credit for accelerating and pushing everybody to get a vaccine quicker than anyone thought that could ever come to market. Next, we put about $2 or $3 trillion into the economy in that first year in 2020. Then what happened? We got to November of the election year. So what we needed to do in a bipartisan way turned into the greed of politics again, with everyone asking who gets credit for it.
Then President Trump wanted to send everybody a check for $2,000. I kept telling him from the beginning that I was not for sending checks out because I looked back in history and I never saw that FDR ever sent a check out to anybody in the Great Depression. He sent out opportunities like the WPA or the CCC and gave people a chance to survive. We didnt do that. We just kept sending checks, and we changed the psyche of America.
But looking ahead, what are the similar opportunities for bipartisanship?
Weve got to get our financial house in order. We cannot live with this crippling debt. If we dont get our house in order, if we dont look at the trust funds that are going bankruptwhether it be Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, highwayall the ones that are having tremendous problems right now. If we cant come to grips with how we face the financial challenges this country has, then were all going to be paying a price that we cant afford.
Senator, youre speaking to a room full of CEOs. What can the business community do to better engage with this somewhat dysfunctional political system youve been describing?
Quit writing checks to everybody.
Everybody? Just dont give any money to any politicians?
Let me explain. All of the people that are with you right now are so successful and have done so well. God bless them all. Im proud of each and every one of them. And theyve been so successful by taking risks and expecting returns on their investments.
The investments youve made in politicsfrom the Democrat side and the Republican sideby asking nothing in return is a foolish investment because you would never do that in your business world or your private life. But you do in your political life. You say: This sides better than that side so Ill give them money, or I dont like that side, theyre too liberal, or I dont like this side because theyre deniers and they cant accept the truth of the facts.
Its a back and forth, but why dont you do this: Tell a politician who comes to you: Im sorry. I dont give checks. I dont give a donation or contribution to any politician. Im willing to make an investment. What should I expect from you? What are you going to do? What have you done in your political life, and what will you do if this is your first time? Tell me so I can make a decision on whether I want to invest in you, because I can expect something in return.
Senator, good advice.
We cant fix it in Washington. You know why? You all are supporting bad behavior. Youre giving checks for bad behavior. Everybody is giving a lot of money to bad behavior. The small donors are giving a lot of money and the larger donors are contributing too.
Ill guarantee it, a child doesnt change their behavior if theyre getting rewarded for it.
