Biden administration officials are calling for action after Hurricane Ida left a trail of eye-popping decimation across multiple states in its wake.
“These once-in-a-century storms are starting to come almost every other year,” White House senior advisor Cedric Richmond said on ABC’s “This Week.” “They’re bigger, stronger. They wreak more havoc. If you look at New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. People should see what climate change is doing. We’re going to address that in our legislation.”
“Now we need Congress to come along with us to protect the American people and invest in them,” he added.
Democrats hope to include historic climate change mitigation in the reconciliation package, particularly the Clean Electricity Payment Program, which would help achieve 80 percent clean electricity by 2030.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), though, raised Democratic blood pressure last week with an op-ed where he threatened the entire Democratic agenda by insisting that the reconciliation process be slowed and its price tag potentially be lowered. If the reconciliation package and bipartisan infrastructure bill become de-linked, it threatens the future of both pieces of legislation. And if Manchin insists on serious cuts to the price of reconciliation, which will mean that some policies get dropped or shrunk, he may trigger a progressive rebellion.
Richmond, for his part, did not express concern.
“It’s not abnormal for this to happen in the legislative process,” he said.
Biden’s FEMA administrator also took to the Sunday circuit, pointing to the destructive hurricane as proof that real action on climate change is desperately needed.
“This is the crisis of our generation, these impacts that we’re seeing from climate change, and we have to act now to try to protect against the future risks that we’re going to face,” administrator Deanne Criswell said on “Fox News Sunday.”
