Democrat Joe Manchin criticizes Biden’s “disgusting and offensive” call to close the coal mines: the senator says this is the “reason why Americans are losing confidence” in the president and he is “divorced from the reality”.
- The Democratic senator from West Virginia condemned the president for his comments on Friday
- Manchin accused Biden of changing his political position before different audiences
- Biden ‘owes these incredible workers an immediate and public apology,’ he said.
- The president said on Friday he wants to close coal plants for ‘wind and solar’
- The White House has an ambitious climate goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has been confronting President Joe Biden’s claim that he wants to close coal mines across the country to replace them with wind and solar plants.
The moderate called the comments “outrageous and divorced from reality” and said, “Comments like these are the reason the American people are losing confidence in President Biden.”
Manchin’s curt statement on Saturday suggesting that Biden change his position “depending on the audience and the politics of the day” comes just three days before the midterms, with Democrats trying to avoid big losses to Republicans.
“Being arrogant about losing coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help and empower this country is offensive and disgusting,” Manchin added.
“The President owes these incredible workers an immediate and public apology and it’s time he learned a lesson that his words matter and have consequences.”
Biden’s comments that prompted Manchin’s furious response came Friday at an event in Carlsbad, California, in his latest bid to woo voters to Democrats in Tuesday’s election.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the White House for comment.
West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has been confronting President Joe Biden’s claim that he wants to shut down coal plants across the country.
The Biden comments that prompted Manchin’s furious response came Friday during an event in Carlsbad, California.
He spoke about his climate policies that are part of his administration’s ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
“I was in Massachusetts about a month ago at the site of the largest former coal plant in the United States,” Biden said.
‘Guess what? It cost them too much money. They can’t count. No one is building new coal plants because they can’t trust it. Even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of the plant’s existence.
‘So it’s going to become a wind generation. And all they’re doing is it’s going to save them a great deal of money and by using the same transmission line that they transmitted coal electricity over, we’re going to shut down these plants all over the United States and have wind power and solar power, and also provides tax credits to help families buy energy-efficient appliances, whether it’s your refrigerator or your coffee maker, solar panels on your home, weatherization your home, things that save an average, experts say, a minimum of $500 a year for the average family.’
The Republican National Committee criticized the comments, saying, “Joe Biden celebrates coal plant workers losing their jobs.”
Biden added that it is “cheaper to generate electricity from wind and solar power than from coal and oil.”
“Literally cheaper,” the president said. ‘It is not a joke.’
A Department of Energy report from June found that 29,271 people had lost their jobs in the fossil fuel sector in 2021.
Manchin is a coal advocate, and about 11,000 West Virginians work in the coal industry.
He struck a deal with Biden earlier this year to push through the Reduce Inflation Act, which was packed with climate initiatives.
Manchin and fellow Democrat Kyrsten Sinema are moderates in the Senate who have presented roadblocks to Biden’s agenda.
Biden hands the pen he used to sign the Democrats’ landmark climate change and health care bill to Manchin in August at the White House.
On Thursday, Manchin gave his midterm address imploring Congress to address the nation’s “crippling debt” by reforming Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare and other programs he says are “broken.”
He told a conference of Fortune CEOs that he would like the next Congress to work on bipartisan entitlement reform to fix programs that are facing “tremendous problems.”
“We can’t live with this crippling debt,” Manchin complained, according to Bloomberg. “If we can’t understand how we deal with the financial challenges this country has, then we’re all going to pay a price we can’t afford.”
