The Exchanges

Q shocked, um, beyond belief that it, that it was something that, that truly went forward. So you were instrumental to that moment, very much deeply negotiating tenants of the IRA. So can you take us back to that time where you were working with your colleagues Um, what drove you to be so intimately involved in the end, uh, and what was your role in ultimately getting the IRA passed?

A Well, I was, I was very lucky, um, that Joe Manchin took me under his wing, um, because he recognized that I was a former governor, like him, and that sometimes it takes former governors a while to get into the, you know, into the meetings where you're actually having an effect. Um, so he used to have these meetings, bipartisan meetings out on his boat. That's where a lot of the bipartisan infrastructure bill took place and got negotiated. That's where a lot of, uh, the Inflation Reduction Act kind of got its start. And, and Joe Manchin really is a fiscally conservative person, and he's progressive. He believes in an all of the above. He thinks you need natural gas and oil, but you need wind, you need solar. Uh, and so the Inflation Reduction Act owed a lot to the fact that he stayed with it. Now, a couple of times he said he was done. Uh, he said, oh, no, that's too far. I'm not going to go. That's too far. And that's where, and it wasn't just me. It was me. I think Chris Coons, uh, Also played a role in, in talking to him, but I, I had that, that benefit of having been a former governor, and having been pretty close to him, uh, through the inflation reduction, or the bipartisan infrastructure bill, so I would find an excuse to talk to him every single day, and just to check on him, and how was he doing, and if he was really over and gonna quit, you know, he told the press he …

AI assessment note: “I had that, that benefit of having been a former governor, and having been pretty close”

Q like, these are exactly the kind of projects we need to power our data future. Like, this is, you know, just full stop. It's really crazy what's happening. Um, okay, but there was more that you did, too, to help kind of protect some of the, some of the things in the bill. So you had an amendment about that effectively protected a residential energy tax credit. Is that right?

A Yeah, so we, we introduced an amendment to take that part of the Inflation Reduction Act's That applied to residential clean energy credit, um, and it would cover 30% of the cost of, uh, it was purchasing and installing, I'm pretty sure, uh, residential solar, the battery backup, uh, it would allow you to utilize geothermal heat pumps, which actually, it turns out in Colorado and a lot of America, those heat pumps are very useful and cost effective and very, very clean. Um, our amendment would have You know, protected the program from Republican cuts for a year, which would have given clean energy, uh, and a lot of these are small businesses, both in Colorado and around the country, it would have given them a runway to kind of weather the storm that the Republicans were creating, uh, and they could have begun to prepare for the loss of that tax credit support. Uh, and again, that's the net, uh, what we were trying to say was 85,000 jobs, so, and we had bipartisan support, uh, Uh, Susan Collins ended up voting for our amendment, but ultimately it failed. But in the fight for that amendment and, and many of the other ones we put forward, again, we did soften, uh, the final bill in, in a number of, and it could have been much more, as bad as it is, it could have been much more horrible.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, so we, we introduced an amendment to take that part”

Q mentioned that you, you sort of knew going into this process, or I guess you did know there, that you weren't going to get Republican votes on this bill, so why were you working with the Republicans in that case? Was it really about Knowing that their involvement would make better policy, or was it something that Manchin was requiring, or what, what was your motivation for bringing them in?

A Well, I have always believed that you get a more durable policy, stronger policy if it's bipartisan, and, and we should recognize that, you know, there's still 40% of the American people that stand firmly behind Donald Trump, and that doesn't make them less American than we are. We may disagree on a number of issues, and we may disagree on the fundamentals of the Constitution, for goodness sakes, um, but they're still part of our tribe. They're still Americans. Joe Manchin had a big part to do with the fact that we would always, always reach out to Republicans, because in that same sense that I have, he felt that Republicans would only add value, and that we had to kind of balance that out, and it was great because he's a pretty conservative I mean, a very fiscally conservative person himself, and by being the go-between, he allowed them to take a lot of the hits for his own budgetary caution, let's call it. In other words, he, but still, I mean, we spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars addressing climate change in that bill, something that had never been done before, and, ah, it, it, I mean, we can criticize it, but still, it's an amazing accomplishment.

AI assessment note: “I have always believed that you get a more durable policy, stronger policy if it's bipartisan”

Q just canceled, and it's a whole bunch of Republicans, including Republican governors, that are coming out and saying we can't build this electricity line. And so I'm kind of like, like, what's going on here? Is there any hope for permitting reform? Is this something that you and your colleagues are discussing, um, or is it something that's just totally off the table because of the craziness of the moment?

A Well, it's gotten into that, into the partisan crosshairs, and it becomes a political football to, to kick back and forth. There are plenty of Republicans that understand that this is One of those unique opportunities when you could get the alignment of self-interest, and that's, in business, that's where good things happen. When you, you start out negotiating with someone, and you think that you're, you disagree on almost everything, and, and, and that, as you talk, you begin to recognize, huh, they're not really holding on to the part I care about. They'll give in on that, um, and what they really want is something I don't care that much about. Actually, we can get our self-interest to align pretty well, And that's how you get a collaboration. That's how you get a compromise. And I think that's where, I mean, right now, if you're in the environmental community, most people I know care deeply about climate change and have a great sense of urgency. We got to go now. Well, that means we've got to get, if you're going to have to build big high voltage transmission lines to get green energy to where it's needed, We can't spend 15 years getting a permit before we even start building. Uh, same thing with critical minerals. You know, the world right now, we haven't changed our mining laws, uh, in, in the United States in over a hundred years. So we're just a bunch of band-aids holdin…

AI assessment note: “There are plenty of Republicans that understand that this is One of those unique opportunities”

Q when you look at the fact that, as you say, all this investment is going into red states, when you look at the fact that this is a bill that 60% of the American population didn't like, what is happening that these Congress people are effectively Like, it seems that they're defying their constituents and doing things that are actively not in their constituents' interests. Like, what's going on here?

A Well, Trump's a big part of it, and he campaigned on this, and, you know, when you look at where his soft money came from, and, and, and soft money, as I've said before, is so pernicious, so evil and, and, and corrosive to our, to a democratic system like what we have, and a large part of his Of the, of the dark money behind his campaign and, uh, and the, you know, his efforts to win the Senate and the Congress came out of oil and gas. And especially these mid-sized companies, every year that they get another year of the status quo, I mean, that industry is making 202 hundred and fifty billion dollars a year in profit. And, and for the life of me, I can't understand, we can't, Why we can't get a price on carbon. And I know some of my friends on the left disagree with me on this, but once you get a price on carbon, then the oil and gas industry isn't going to come unglued. They're going to go, they're going to, they're going to accept it. They might not like it a little bit, but it's not going to make that big a difference because it's going to affect all of their businesses equally. Um, and it's going to put them a little bit at a disadvantage for wind and solar because they don't have, they're not generating any carbon. Uh, and that obviously would make such a, a concept You know, unthinkable for President Trump, because he is so devoted to this notion of promoting coal, promo…

AI assessment note: “dark money behind his campaign... came out of oil and gas”

Q big bear of a bill. I think there's some less, um, less children friendly ways of referring to this as well. We might want to call it the reconciliation bill for purposes of this conversation. But what are, what are some of the things in the reconciliation bill that most concern you, particularly with respect to climate and with what you fought so hard to gain with the IRA? Yeah.

A Well, you know that, for me, what's most problematic, in fact, is that we made all these sacrifices, right? All these jobs, mostly in red states, all these amazing investments. You know, the level of innovation we were already seeing, and now is going to grind to a halt. Was gonna create momentum that would last decades. And what did we do this for? We did this largely so we could give tax breaks to the truly wealthy. And I, you know, Colorado's, I wouldn't say we're one of the richest states, but we have our fair share of billionaires. Um, and I try to listen to their opinion on things. I spend probably more of my time doing, you know, healthcare roundtables in rural areas and, you know, uh, trying to find workers Round tables where we can figure out how they're going to get retirement, ah, resources. But I, every billionaire I talked to, and this, this is like probably five people, and I asked him, do you care? And I remember one, ah, billionaire that, I mean, he looked at me and he smiled and he says, just so you have a frame of reference, I would have got, I would get a million and a half dollar at tax break. Off of this bill. He says, last year, my income was nine hundred and twenty million dollars. If you think I care about a one and a half million dollar tax break, you're mistaken, because it's not something I'm fighting for, and, you know, if anything, he looked at me, …

AI assessment note: “We did this largely so we could give tax breaks to the truly wealthy.”