Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) blasted the Biden administration again on Friday for seemingly reneging on another policy from the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act.

In a statement Friday, Manchin blasted the Biden administration’s newly-implemented regulations for the electric vehicle tax credit. The IRS proposed new rules Friday that would reduce the number of vehicles which qualify for the $7,500 tax credit, but it would also loosen the restrictions for critical minerals supplied to make the batteries.

“Yet again – the guidance released by the Department of the Treasury completely ignores the intent of the Inflation Reduction Act,” Manchin said. “It is horrific that the Administration continues to ignore the purpose of the law which is to bring manufacturing back to America and ensure we have reliable and secure supply chains. American tax dollars should not be used to support manufacturing jobs overseas. It is a pathetic excuse to spend more taxpayer dollars as quickly as possible and further cedes control to the Chinese Communist Party in the process.”

“The guidance includes a 60-day comment period and I ask for every American to comment,” he added. “My comment is simple: stop this now – just follow the law.”

Manchin’s gripe seems to be specifically about one of the new regulations, which loosens some requirements for critical mineral sourcing. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, in order to qualify for the $7,500 tax credit, at least 40% of the critical materials needed in the battery must come from domestic sources or countries that have a free trade agreement with the United States, The New York Times reported; but the new regulations loosen that requirement to include countries that have a separate Critical Minerals Agreement with the U.S. The proposed rule singles out Japan, which signed a Critical Minerals Agreement with the U.S. on Tuesday. The new rule also paves the way for more countries to be included in that list.

The Daily Wire reported in 2022 that only about 21 vehicles of the 72 electric car models currently on the road would qualify for the full $7,500 tax credit. The New York Times projected that when the new sourcing requirements go into effect on April 18, even fewer vehicles will qualify for the full credit.

Manchin, who provided the critical vote that pushed the Inflation Reduction Act over the line in 2022, has been sore all week about how the Biden administration has implemented the law. “[​​I]​nstead of implementing the law as intended, unelected ideologues, bureaucrats and appointees seem determined to violate and subvert the law to advance a partisan agenda that ignores both energy and fiscal security​,” Manchin wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday. “​Specifically, they are ignoring the law’s intent to support and expand fossil energy and are redefining ​’​domestic energy​’​ to increase clean-energy spending to potentially deficit-breaking levels. The administration is attempting at every turn to implement the bill it wanted, not the bill Congress actually passed​.”

In exchange for his vote, Manchin was also promised a side deal on oil and gas permitting reform by Senate Democratic leadership, but that deal has since fallen apart.

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Former Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) predicted in July that Manchin would be disappointed by the bill. “I think he got taken to the cleaners,” Toomey said. “He’s agreeing to all this bad policy.”

The following is the opening satirical monologue from “The Andrew Klavan Show.“

You know, when things in America get genuinely upsetting, I sometimes like to take a step back, sidle unobtrusively to the door, slip out, run to my car before anyone notices I’m gone, drive to the airport and catch a plane to one of the isolated islands of French Polynesia where I can wile away the hours with my bare-breasted native lover Tehamana while dining on luscious local fruits and drinking the milk of coconuts, preferably laced with vodka or possibly LSD, whichever is more likely to transform this shrieking hellscape into a colorful, star-speckled hallucination, something like the album cover of the Magical Mystery Tour, except without Paul being dead.

But if that option is not available because of airplane schedules or short supplies of really good drugs, sometimes instead I remind myself that periods of insanity and disorder like this have been a re-occurring feature of American history. Just this week, Michael Barone, the brilliant political analyst — unless it was the Michael Barone who sells ice cream from that big white truck near Central Park — but it’s probably the political guy, right? — anyway, he wrote a helpful article in the New York Sun, pointing out that [quote] “America Goes Crazy Every 50 Years or So.” [unquote]

Barone begins with discussing the War of 1812 when the British burned Washington, D.C., to the ground before Andrew Jackson defeated their forces at the Battle of New Orleans. And that really was crazy, when you think about it, because the British had just finished burning Washington, D.C., to the ground, so defeating them at New Orleans was incredibly ungrateful. We should have strewn their feet with roses and asked them to come back every few years to make sure no one built the place back again. I mean, sure, who wants the British here, when they all talk like homosexuals? I mean, that’s why we had a revolution. A lot of good that did us.

Where was I? Oh yeah…

Fifty years later, we went crazy again and started killing each other in the Civil War. Now don’t get me wrong. The Civil War was fought over the very important issue of women’s rights. I mean, how was Scarlett O’Hara supposed to hold down a job when she had to wear a skirt with the circumference of a helicopter pad? Fortunately, Clark Gable was able to smuggle her out of Atlanta as the city burned down around them, so the war was won and everything went back to normal. But for a minute there, I thought we were in real trouble.

Crazy Time arrived again like clockwork fifty years later with the election of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson did establish some beloved and long-lasting American traditions, like blacks voting for Democrats who hate them and Americans getting killed in wars that have nothing to do with us. But he did go overboard with the 1917 Espionage Act which gave the government power to silence and imprison its political enemies. Luckily, nothing like that could ever happen today, or if it could, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to say so out loud because you know what happens.

Then came the ’60s, when American socialists burned down cities, encouraged spiking crime, destroyed the relations between the sexes, and gutted our institutions. Then came the 2000s, when American socialists burned down cities, encouraged spiking crime, destroyed the relations between the sexes and gutted our Institutions. But no matter how ravingly insane American socialists became, some things in this country remained dependably consistent, like Bernie Sanders.

So my message to you today is that, no matter how much the flaming wreckage of our cities begins to look like the inside of Bernie Sanders’ mind, except without all those women who enjoy getting tied up for some reason, you should never lose hope. Or if you do lose hope, you should never lose faith that you could have hope if you hadn’t lost your faith. And if you lose both your faith and your hope, you shouldn’t get that look on your face where your lower lip starts to tremble and your cheeks get all red and puffy. Unless you’re a girl, then it can be kind of cute, but don’t overplay it. 

Because whatever happens, you can always just remind yourself, that every 50 years America goes crazy, then we get over it. In, like, 49 years or so.

Andrew Klavan is the host of The Andrew Klavan Show at The Daily Wire. A popular political satirist and Hollywood screenwriter, Klavan is also an award-winning novelist. His newest novel is A Strange Habit of Mind, book two in the Cameron Winter Mystery series.

The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.