The establishment media and the Democratic party are once again saying the quiet part loud — in this case extremely loud.
In a Bloomberg article, writers Akshat Rathi and Jennifer A. Dlouhy have documented for the world, in great detail, the aggressive, systematic, concerted efforts of billionaire Bill Gates, establishment Democrats, lobbyists and radical far-left extremists to change the mind of a U.S. Senator and cause him to not only vote in favor of the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022” but even take the lead on it.
The article began by explaining that in July, Gates picked up a phone and reportedly coached Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
“[Schumer] said to me on one call that he’d shown infinite patience,” Gates explained to Bloomberg, “You’re right,” Gates told Schumer. “And all you need to do is show infinite plus one patience.”
Gates was addressing Schumer’s frustrations with Manchin over the West Virginia Democrat’s continued disagreement with his party over the massive expenditure during an inflationary crisis.
The article then goes on to describe “an ad hoc group of quiet Manchin influencers” who began to focus their efforts: “Collin O’Mara, chief executive officer of the National Wildlife Federation, recruited economists to assuage Manchin’s concerns — including representatives from the University of Chicago and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware brought in a heavyweight: former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.”
The economists were reportedly able to “send this signal that [the bill’s] going to help with the deficit,” O’Mara told Bloomberg. “It’s going to be slightly deflationary and it’s going to spur growth and investment in all these areas.”
This is in spite of The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School’s preliminary analysis of the Inflation Reduction Act determining the act would actually increase inflation.
“The Act would very slightly increase inflation until 2024 and decrease inflation thereafter. These point estimates are statistically indistinguishable from zero, thereby indicating low confidence that the legislation will have any impact on inflation,” the Penn Wharton budget model determined.
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The budget model had calculated that inflation would increase up to 0.05 percent by 2024. “We estimate a 0.25 percentage point fall in the [personal consumption expenditures] price index by the late 2020s,” the group added.
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation had reached a similar finding as well and stated, “On balance, the long-run impact on inflation is particularly uncertain but likely close to zero.”
According to the Bloomberg report, “Gates was banking on more than just his trademark optimism about addressing climate change and other seemingly intractable problems that have been his focus since stepping down as Microsoft’s chief executive two decades ago. As he revealed to Bloomberg Green, he has quietly lobbied Manchin and other senators, starting before President Joe Biden had won the White House, in anticipation of a rare moment in which heavy federal spending might be secured for the clean-energy transition.”
Gates laid out that his discussions with Manchin gave him cause to believe that he could be swayed to vote for the package, and he was willing to “continue pressing the case himself until the very end.”
“I will say that it’s one of the happier moments of my climate work,” Gates said.
“The last month people felt like, OK, we tried, we’re done, it failed,” Gates said. “I believed it was a unique opportunity.”
The billionaire and political influencer then described how he leveraged a relationship with Manchin he had cultivated over the course of three years. “We were able to talk even at a time when he felt people weren’t listening.”
“We were able to talk even at a time when [Manchin] felt people weren’t listening.”
Bill Gates, who was among those quietly lobbying US Senator Joe Manchin, talks about the secret push to save Biden’s climate bill https://t.co/1k1q5ZHly2 pic.twitter.com/6pRDVwuz36
— Bloomberg (@business) August 17, 2022
Meanwhile, as reported widely, angry radical far-left extremists confronted Manchin in person at his home by kayaking to his houseboat. Manchin finally agreed to meet with the protestors after they threatened to continue coming directly to his home.
11/ Thank you to @Sen_JoeManchin for specifically offering an in-person meeting on Capitol Hill today or Monday for the West Virginians of @Race_Matters_WV @_youngwv @RiseUpWV and more!
They’re looking forward to it and extending stays to ensure they’ll be in DC on Monday! pic.twitter.com/jVS8n1zkpW
— CPD Action 💥 (@CPDAction) October 1, 2021
The pressure campaign increased as President Joe Biden sent emissaries to West Virginia industrial interests to build a groundswell of pressure from donors and organizers by “presenting carefully picked demonstrations of how clean-energy spending could be a boon for his coal-and-gas state.”
.@glennkirschner2 .@CheriJacobus .@B52Malmet .@JudyPete Kayaktivists surround Manchin’s yacht to protest his tanking of the Build Back Better bill. pic.twitter.com/Owo9qbuOTx
— ChattJazz 🇺🇦 ☮️ 🌻 (@ChattJazz) December 21, 2021
Gates even seemed to acknowledge the enormous wave of pressure against Manchin that he himself was a part of, “I wouldn’t have wanted to be in his position,” Gates said. “The last six months have been challenging, even just getting in his car and trying to live a normal life.”
In July, Schumer and Manchin began work on what would become the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and Gates saw another opportunity to persuade Manchin: the Sun Valley media conference in Idaho. Gates made sure he was there and met with Manchin. “We had a talk about what was missing, what needed to be done,” Gates told Bloomberg. “And then after that it was a lot of phone calls.”
After the conference, Schumer increased his push on Manchin to move the bill forward but it backfired. Talks stalled and he publicly claimed that he had ruled out passing any tax and climate bills before the August recess. But then the proverbial hammer dropped. Biden was vowing executive action to sidestep Congress and declare a “climate emergency” and Democrat Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico publicly questioned why Manchin was allowed to continue chairing the Senate Energy Committee.
“Joe Manchin was allowed to feel the whole breadth of the blowback that had really been held back up until that point,” Christy Goldfuss, senior vice president of energy and environment policy with the Center for American Progress and a former adviser to President Barack Obama told Bloomberg. “Everyone really unleashed the rage,” she added.
“Everybody had to kind of look into that abyss together to get their head around the fact that something is better than nothing,” said Heather Zichal, a former Obama climate adviser now leading the American Clean Power Association. The Bloomberg writers described it as ” a moment of reckoning.”
Finally, the lobbyists came into play. While Gates, Schumer and far-leftist radicals were working on Manchin, quietly The BlueGree Alliance coalition, a convergence of environmentalist and organized labor groups, decided to cash in the 18 months of influence they’d been building with the West Virginia Senator.
“We came to a judgment that Manchin legitimately wanted to get something done but he had serious concerns, and those concerns needed to be addressed,” Jason Walsh said, executive director of the coalition. “We believed he was still negotiating in good faith.”
Gates agreed. “You know, people say Joe likes coal or something like that,” he added. “That’s really not fair. Joe wanted a climate bill.”
The final push came from a group of Democrat Senators led by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon whom he referred to as the “never-say-die caucus,” that included Sens. Chris Coons and John Hickenlooper of Colorado worked to salvage a bill from previous drafts and “reassure Manchin”.
“I was listening to every single thing that Joe said that he had a real problem with, and I was trying to address it,” Hickenlooper said.
Two of the largest labor groups in West Virginia the AFL-CIO and the United Mine Workers of America threw their considerable weight in as well pushing Manchin to use the bill to fund black lung health benefits for miners. They even highlighted provisions for more tax credits with American-made materials and projects with higher wages and built near defunct coal mines. The proverbial dam broke.
Manchin spoke to reporters about the road to the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed into law Tuesday.
The senator said he had doubts about Dems’ ability to pass a major climate bill, but concerns about U.S. energy independence kept bringing him back to the table. pic.twitter.com/JxaTaogeRi
— POLITICO (@politico) August 17, 2022
Not only was the group successful, but Manchin would even go on to sponsor the bill alongside Schumer, ultimately standing alongside Biden and the Majority Leader as he signed it into law.
