Joe Manchin vs. Jennifer Granholm, lover's quarrel edition

Late last week, Joe Manchin's temper boiled over during a heated debate over what was allowed in the Inflation Reduction Act. I suspect that Manchin was upset that he'd gotten snookered into voting for the Inflation Reduction Act. The truth is that Manchin is staring down the barrel at a likely defeat at the hands of Jim Justice.

While Manchin was fighting the Build Back Better Bill, Sen. Manchin's polls kept climbing. The minute he agreed to voting for the Inflation Reduction Act, Sen. Manchin's poll numbers started dropping. Enter Jennifer Granholm, Biden's ideological Secretary of Energy.

Sen. Manchin grilled Secretary Granholm, expressing "frustration with the Inflation Reduction Act's tax credit for electric vehicles, taking issue with loopholes in its distinction between manufacturing and processing of materials. 'We want this done in America. We don't want this overseas because basically then there's no urgency for our manufacturing to ever do this,' Manchin said."

Granholm fired back, saying:

"We should all feel very pleased to note that in this battery supply chain — since these laws and since the beginning of the president's term, there have been 150 battery companies or a supply chain elements that have announced they're opening up in the United States. Where it would have been, to your point, before in China or in Asia — 150 across all of these states. That equals almost $100 billion worth of investment in the U.S."

The policy that this committee and that your leadership as well as others has passed matters. And that's why we're seeing all of these companies come to the United States, including extraction for extraction, for processing, for manufacturing, for the whole supply chain."

That's BS from Secretary Granholm. The rare earth minerals are mostly owned by Chinese Communist Party companies. They aren't letting go of those mining rights anytime without losing a war. They see those rights as leverage over other nations. Here's the fight between Sen. Manchin and Secretary Granholm:

Under the act's guidance on critical minerals, 40% of the value of them in the battery "must be extracted or processed in the United States or a country with which the United States has a free trade agreement, or be recycled in North America," for this year, according to the Treasury Department.

The chances of that happening without the Biden administration 'getting creative' with their definitions of these terms. That's what was happening during the exchange between Granholm and Manchin. She said that there was "a difference of opinion amongst the lawyers." Manchin shot back, saying "It depends on who's paying the lawyers."

Let's return to the real problem. If Sen. Manchin hadn't gotten suckered into this deal, he wouldn't have to quibble about the bill's provisions.