Skip to content Skip to footer

Centrists Threaten Congress’s Only Climate Bill as Earth Records Hottest Month

The $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill contains some of the only climate provisions with any chance of passing Congress.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pennsylvania), Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey), Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Michigan) talk before the Problem Solvers Caucus news conference on the Infrastructure Deal in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on Friday, July 30, 2021.

Centrist Democrats over the weekend doubled down on threats to kill the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, with some of the only major climate proposals that currently stand a chance of passing Congress, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) told lawmakers of a plan to tie the reconciliation and bipartisan infrastructure bills together.

Nine centrist Democrats, led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey), last week threatened to tank the reconciliation bill if Pelosi doesn’t first bring the bipartisan infrastructure bill to a near-immediate vote. The House speaker is currently planning to advance both bills together to ensure that the reconciliation bill, which contains many provisions cut by Republicans and conservative Democrats from the infrastructure bill, also passes.

She emphasized that plan on Sunday, saying in a letter that she’s looking into creating a rule that would allow both bills to advance simultaneously. Pelosi is presumably trying to appease both conservative Democrats and progressives in her caucus, the latter of whom say they would reject the infrastructure bill without a sufficient reconciliation package.

The nine centrists are evidently displeased with that plan, responding in a joint statement, “our view remains consistent. We should vote first on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework without delay and then move to immediate consideration of the budget.”

The group said last week that they think the infrastructure bill is a win for Joe Biden and that if it’s held up to fit Pelosi’s planned timeline, people will forget about it. One centrist lawmaker, not a signatory to last week’s letter, described the infrastructure bill as being held “hostage” to the reconciliation bill.

Threatening the reconciliation bill, however, is viewed as a far greater danger to President Joe Biden and the Democrats’ agenda. Whereas bipartisanship — however faulty — seems to be one of Biden’s priorities, the reconciliation bill contains a wide swath of Biden’s agenda. It’s also one of his last best hopes to pass climate action while the Democrats still hold the majority in Congress.

“We can’t call people moderate Democrats if they vote against child care, paid leave, health care, and addressing climate change,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) on Twitter. “This is the Democratic agenda, it’s the president’s agenda, and it’s what we promised people across America. Now we must deliver.”

Progressives for months have been emphasizing that now is the time to pass climate action as the window to prevent some of the climate crisis’s worst effects is rapidly closing.

Indeed, on Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association announced that July is officially the hottest month in Earth’s recorded history since agencies began keeping records 142 years ago. This terrifying news comes on the heels of a tumultuous few months of climate change-effected heat waves in the U.S., which have created unprecedented conditions in the Northwest and across the country.

The news also came shortly after a landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that, even if the world were to somehow stop emitting greenhouse gases immediately, some of the effects of the climate crisis are irreversible and locked in. The world is set to blow past the Paris Climate Agreement goal to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees celsius or less.

Democrats have said in a memo on the reconciliation bill that it will “put America on a path to meet President Biden’s climate change goals of 80% clean electricity and 50% economy-wide carbon emissions reductions by 2030.” One of the major mechanisms for that change could be a clean energy payment program that would incentivize utilities to use clean energy sources.

Meanwhile, the bipartisan group of senators working on the infrastructure bill — who were also, coincidentally, lobbied by Exxon — cut climate out of the bill nearly entirely, leaving a meager amount for electric vehicle funding and not much else.

Climate was sidelined so efficiently by the centrist lawmakers that Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) said in June that the deal that centrists were cutting at the time was “climate denial masquerading as bipartisanship.” It’s hard to imagine that this current situation — with conservative House Democrats threatening one of the U.S.’s only chances of cutting emissions for a symbolic “win” for bipartisanship — is much different.

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.