Manchin's Choice on Build Back Better: Mine Workers or Mine Owners

[Celerity]

Senator Joe Manchin III is caught between the mine workers’ union, which supports President Biden’s social policy and climate bill, and mine owners in his state who oppose it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/us/politics/manchin-coal-miners.html

https://archive.fo/mUSXM



WASHINGTON — For years, burly men in camouflage hunting jackets have been a constant presence in the Capitol Hill office of Senator Joe Manchin III, their United Mine Workers logos giving away their mission: to lobby not only for the interests of coal, but also on more personal matters such as pensions, health care and funding to address black lung disease.

So when the miners’ union and the West Virginia A.F.L.-C.I.O. came out last month with statements pleading for passage of President Biden’s Build Back Better Act — just hours after Mr. Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, said he was a “no” — the Capitol took notice.

With the miners now officially on the opposite side of the mine owners, it signalled the escalation of a behind-the-scenes struggle centered in Mr. Manchin’s home state to sway the balking senator, whose scepticism about his party’s marquee domestic policy measure has emerged as a potentially fatal impediment to its enactment.

While most of the attention to the fate of the social safety net and climate change bill has fixed on ideological divisions among Democrats over its largest provisions and overall cost, the battle underway over parochial issues in Mr. Manchin’s state could ultimately matter more than the public pleas of liberal groups and relentless bargaining by Democratic leaders.

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