EDITORIAL: Stunner: Manchin Agrees With Obama on Carbon Taxes, Too
Governor Joe Manchin has seemed to have national ambitions for some time now. We saw what he was capable of just this past spring in his ardent defense of President Obama's seriously unpopular health care reform legislation. Despite Obamacare polling badly in West Virginia in both parties, Governor Manchin marched to President Obama's tune--even though that same legislation now provides federal funding for taxpayer abortions in Pennsylvania.
However, we should have seen this coming. While Manchin has always tried to pass himself off as a conservative, he would have to be the only conservative we know who backs President Obama's grand vision to tax the coal industry and anyone else who uses coal and other carbon-based fuels.
How the federal government intends to take the money gathered from the carbon tax to deal with any alleged pollution is never explained very well, leaving many to believe that the greenhouse gas concern is just a ruse to justify bringing more tax revenue into the federal treasury for Democratic pet projects.
But Manchin, appearing on CNBC's "Power Lunch" program, defended Obama's
quest for a carbon tax to somehow pay for the greenhouse gases emitted from
coal-burning power plants and other outlets. But listen closely to the contradictions
within Manchin's own message.
Despite Obama saying that cap-and-trade or a carbon tax would cause energy prices to skyrocket, Manchin told CNBC that such a carbon tax was an inevitable possibility.
“West Virginia – we understand that,” Manchin said. “We’re going to have a very aggressive renewable portfolio, but we need that partnership and Barack brings that leadership to us. He brings that partnership coming from a coal state himself. Now, they’re going to have to pay for the carbons – whether a cap-and-trade or whether it’s in a carbon tax.”
Now wait a minute. Does this sound like a West Virginia Governor? Or a Barack Obama press flak? Did you read that last line clearly? "Now, they're going to have to pay for the carbons--whether a cap-and-trade or whether it's in a carbon tax."
Who said, Governor Manchin? And why are you so eager to jump aboard President Obama's bandwagon on a measure that would bankrupt large chunks of our coal industry in West Virginia and undoubtedly cost us hundreds, maybe thousands of jobs?
How could Joe Manchin, a former coal broker, end up betraying the coal industry in West Virginia this badly? How could he call cap-and-trade or another kind of carbon tax "inevitable" when any other West Virginia Governor would fight it with everything he's got?
That's easy. Because Joe Manchin puts himself and his national ambitions above everything and everyone else--even the constituents here in the Mountain State that he has sworn to protect and defend.
Here we thought Governor Manchin just wanted to leave office early to head to the U.S. Senate so that he could serve West Virginia in a new and different way. But more and more the truth seems to be that he can't wait to help Barack Obama remake the U.S. and West Virginia in his own image.