This article appears in the October 2022 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.
Ten years before Joe Biden signed the centerpiece of the Democratic legislative agenda, the Inflation Reduction Act, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) was thousands of miles from home, looking out at the dense forests of West Virginia from an oversized van. Depending on the outcome of the 2012 elections, either Wyden or his Republican counterpart, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, would take over the leadership of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Both of them came to the Mountain State at the invitation of a freshman Democrat not even two years into his term named Joe Manchin.
The committee leaders were asked to visit all of the energy projects West Virginia had to offer: wind, hydroelectric, shale gas, solar, and a strip-mining operation in the ancient southern coalfields. “At one point I almost said, ‘Are you sure? Tour coal plants?’” Wyden recalled.
But Manchin had heard about Wyden’s ability to work across party and ideological lines in the Senate. “You listen to everyone and you have ideas,” Manchin told him.
The energy facilities were spread out across the state, giving the senators lots of time to talk. Manchin told him that whenever energy and climate issues came up, his constituents felt like they were an afterthought, forced to succumb to greater priorities. Wyden, taking the opening, decided to bounce a concept off his colleague.
