This was a bad weekend for fans of worthwhile economic policy. We saw a series of leaks about Joe Manchin’s red lines for the Build Back Better public-investment legislation, which, if agreed to, would leave a desiccated husk of a bill that might not even be worthwhile on its own terms.
Let’s recap where we’re at. As rumored for a while, Manchin opposes the Clean Energy Performance Program (CEPP) that was intended to be the centerpiece of the climate measures in the bill. CEPP would have made payments to utility companies that added renewable energy and penalized those that kept dirty energy in their portfolios. It’s a key part of President Biden’s target of reducing emissions by 50 percent by 2030.
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