President Biden on Friday said he would take "strong executive action" to "tackle the climate crisis and strengthen our domestic clean energy industry."
This statement came one day after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) pulled out of a climate deal that had been in the works for more than a year and had been specifically tailored to meet Manchin's demands, The New York Times reported.
Former Obama adviser John Podesta said Manchin had cemented his legacy as "the one man who single-handedly doomed humanity." The West Virginia moderate previously drew his party's ire when he sank President Biden's flagship Build Back Better bill and when he refused to support a Senate rule change that would bypass the filibuster so Democrats could pass voting rights legislation.
Manchin signaled on Wednesday that he might withdraw from the deal over concerns that new climate spending could exacerbate the ongoing inflation crisis. "No matter what spending aspirations some in Congress may have, it is clear to anyone who visits a grocery store or a gas station that we cannot add any more fuel to this inflation fire," he said. The same day Manchin released this statement, the Labor Department reported that inflation jumped 9.1 percent between June 2021 and June 2022.