Nearly everybody (including us) named Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) “most powerful person on Capitol Hill” after the November 2020 election. Now his primacy of the last 22 months could be his downfall. 

The Hill reports that Manchin’s “side-deal” with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “to enact permitting reform by the end of the year” is on “life support” as Senate Republicans look to punish the West Virginia senator for supporting President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. 

What would Manchin’s predecessor, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) do?

In his deal with Schumer to pass the IRA, Machin was to get Democratic support for a permitting reform bill that would assure approval of West Virginia’s Mountain Valley Pipeline project, which would return a Byrdian victory to the three-term Democratic senator from West Virginia, where 68% of voters chose Donald J. Trump over Joe Biden in 2020. Because centrist Democrat Manchin delivered the crucial majority vote for the Inflation Reduction Act last August, the GOP is angling to kill the permitting reform bill (which needs 10 Republicans to pass without filibuster) to strengthen their chances of defeating his possible re-election bid in 2024. 

Upshot: “Permitting reform” is a traditionally Republican-friendly issue. But not in today’s national political climate.

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