What just happened? The latest episode of the Manchin Diaries, guest starring Krysten Sinema doesn’t disappoint. On Tuesday, Aug. 16, President Biden signed into law this country’s largest-ever climate change action in response to the “the carbon dioxide problem,” as first described in 1969 by the Nixon Administration.
CHIPS Act’s subsidies for semi-conductor manufacturing steps into the batting circle, now with a bigger bat. Is it the next batter-up in Congress? With Sen. Manchin’s (D – West Va.) death blow dealt to the Biden Administration’s climate change legislation in the U.S. Senate, the blockade of the pending CHIPS Act imposed by the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R – Kentucky) appears to have been removed. On Tuesday, July 19, the Senate held a test vote (64-34) to move forward with the semi-conductor manufacturing subsidy measure that had stalled previously in Congress, and now with a bigger impact.
HB 377 LOCAL FISCAL RECOVERY (Hall, T., Swearingen, D.) Introduced on July 15, 2021, this bill seeks to amend just-enacted HB 168 to appropriate the entirety of the U.S. Treasury’s allocation of Local Fiscal Recovery Funds ($844MM) to nonentitlement units of local government (NEUs), to be distributed by Ohio OBM.
Federal News:
Thoughts on the ban of Russian oil’s impact on global energy supply and demand: The European Union’s pending embargo on Russian oil imports (save for pipeline-supplied oil to Hungary and other counties) may re-order the entire globe’s long-held status quo in the supply of energy.
State News:
State’s Appalachian region to receive $500MM in funding for transformational projects: Inserted into HB 377’s appropriations of the 2nd tranche of ARPA funding from the U.S. Treasury to nonentitlement units of local government (i.e., smaller municipalities, villages, and townships), the General Assembly appropriated an additional $500MM of the State’s ARPA funds to bolster “transformational projects” with “region-wide impact” in Ohio’s 32 Appalachian counties.