Joe Manchin’s advice to Joe Biden: ‘Go back to the policies that we’ve had before.’
Joe Manchin’s advice to Joe Biden: ‘Go back to the policies that we’ve had before.’
‘T oday I’m announcing the United States is targeting the main artery of Russia’s economy,” President Biden said at the White House on Tuesday. “We’re banning all imports of Russian oil and gas and energy.”
The president had been reluctant to impose such a ban since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly two weeks ago, but in recent days Congress made it abundantly clear that it would act if the Biden administration would not. Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich reported on Tuesday that Biden personally called Democratic leaders in Congress and urged them to pull back on legislation to ban Russian oil imports and revoke Russia’s most-favored-nation status. The White House “did not want to appear that they had been boxed in by Congress on this issue,” Heinrich wrote.
Most Republicans in Congress responded by praising Biden’s announcement while simultaneously demanding that the Biden administration and Congress enact measures to increase American energy production.
“I’m happy that the president has announced the ban on Russian oil imports,” GOP senator Marco Rubio said in a video on Tuesday. “We should replace it with American oil, not Saudi oil, not Iranian oil, not Venezuelan oil.” There’s been a surprising level of unity among Republicans calling for a ban on Russian imports. Josh Hawley, the populist GOP senator from Missouri, said last week: “Russia’s a gas station. That’s what it is. It’s not a country; it’s a gas station. We need to turn it off.” Hawley also urged the Biden administration to “reopen American energy production in full.”
The unity in Congress on the question of banning Russian oil may simply reflect the broad unity among American voters on the issue.
A Quinnipiac poll conducted March 4 to March 6 — after gas prices had already spiked across the country — asked respondents: “Would you support a ban on Russian oil, if it meant higher gasoline prices in the United States?” By a margin of 71 percent to 22 percent, Americans favored banning Russian oil. Opposition to banning Russian oil was much lower among older voters (who tend to be more reliable in turning out to the polls): Just 10 percent of voters age 50 and older opposed the ban, while 23 percent of 35- to 49-year-olds opposed it, and 38 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds opposed it.
It remains to be seen whether broad support for the ban will be sustained over months, but the immediate partisan divide is between Democratic leaders and Republicans (joined by moderate Democrats) on the policy of ramping up production of American oil and other domestic sources of energy.
Asked about increasing domestic oil production, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer pretended that there isn’t even a live policy debate. “The bottom line is the administration has said that they are not holding back on domestic production,” Schumer said at a weekly press conference on Tuesday. But Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia spelled out specifically how current federal policies are holding back American energy.
“Go back to the policies that we’ve had before,” Manchin told CNN, noting that leasing in the Gulf of Mexico and Bureau of Land Management lands has been off-target.
All of this has to go back into production. That’s all we’re asking for. If we’re asking the rest of the world to step up, let’s show what we’re going to step up. Any oil that’s needed [by] our allies around the world, we produce it cleaner than anybody.
Arkansas GOP senator Tom Cotton pointed out, “Last June, Biden blocked oil leasing in Alaska. This oil could have helped lower the cost of gas — instead, Biden is begging Venezuela and Iran to increase production.”
Manchin is far from the only Democrat in Congress who wants to increase the production of American energy. “I think that the opportunity here is to do it domestically, create jobs here,” Montana Democratic senator Jon Tester said on CNN. But the policies that Manchin and Tester support are opposed by climate activists, and there’s no sign yet that Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden are willing to cross the party’s base in order to relieve pressure on Americans being squeezed by higher energy prices.