Schumer Threw Mamaroneck Under the Bus

I watched Hurricane Ian pass through Florida and threaten the Carolinas from my living room in Mamaroneck. I occasionally glance out my window and remember when my own street was deluged with rainwater. The morning after Ida, my neighbors dismally surveyed the lazy river between our houses and witnessed our belongings drift by. It wasn’t the first time many of us experienced flooding in our homes, but for many it was the worst.

Mamaroneck instinctively recognizes the urgency of the moment as we push for local flood mitigation, transparency, and to have a voice against future devastation. Homes and businesses in Mamaroneck brandish lawn-signs depicting houses underwater that say: “Mamaroneck is Drowning, Flood Mitigation Now!”

Scientific consensus tells us that coastal flooding, flash flooding, and extreme precipitation events will increase as sea levels rise due to climate change. Preventative measures need implementation at the federal level, we must keep global temperatures below 1.5 Celsius of warming above pre-Industrial levels to avoid climate catastrophe. These simple facts are at least superficially recognized by several politicians who have only now begun to acknowledge the immense public support for climate change action.

Democratic Senate Leader, Chuck Schumer, tweeted in 2019: “Climate change is an urgent crisis, an existential threat to our country and our planet”. Schumer foreshadowed the urgency we now feel in Mamaroneck by saying in 2020: “The climate crisis is not some distant threat. It is here now, and it will be catastrophic if we don’t strike back immediately”. The Inflation Reduction Act was a step in the right direction towards tackling climate change and building a sustainable future, although experts and many progressives understand it isn’t enough.

You can imagine my surprise when I learned Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin secretly negotiated a now-removed dirty side deal benefitting Big Oil. Schumer and Manchin’s permitting bill mandated all permits for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project impeded by environmental violations and judicial rulings, be issued within 30-days of passage, essentially removing any scope for judicial review. The bill also mandated a 2-year limit on environmental reviews for major projects regardless of how intricate they are or potentially harmful for human health or the environment.

When the bill was published, more than 400 scientists, doctors, and nurses sent a letter to Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to reject the deal. More than 76 senators, including Bernie Sanders, Jeffrey Merkley, Tammy Duckworth, and Elizabeth Warren signed another letter imploring the deals removal. Bernie Sanders courageously announced he would not vote for a government funding bill if the side deal remained. The outcry against this side deal occurred on a local level too with 35 New York State political groups sending a shared letter to Schumer. Indeed, the blowback against this ruinous side deal was bipartisan too, Republican Senators angry at Manchin for their own political reasons telegraphed their own plan to reject the side deal.

I was shocked to find Schumer still claims on his website that climate change is a crisis and it “disproportionately harms communities of color and working class communities, making it not only an environmental crisis, but also an economic and racial justice crisis.” How could he then turn his back on Mamaroneck and create a side deal that would continue to damage the climate and threaten the village of Mamaroneck’s immigrant and POC communities that primarily inhabit the multi-family, rental, and lower-income housing that sits in the most vulnerable flood zones?

What motivates Schumer to pass a bill against his own platform, political allies, and Mamaroneck? Journalist and co-writer of ‘Don’t Look Up’, David Sirota, points out the fact “employees from one of the companies leading the West Virginia pipeline project have been funneling cash to Manchin and Schumer- to the point where they are now this election cycle’s second and fifth largest contributors to the duo, respectively. That same company, NextEra, has also dumped more than $400,000 into Democrats’ House and Senate campaign committees.”

More disheartening than Schumer's inexplicably horrendous side deal despite the clear climate destruction it would bring to Mamaroneck and beyond, is that Schumer played an arguably passive role in its removal. Schumer stated in floor remarks: "Senator Manchin has requested, and I have agreed to move forward and pass the recently-filed Continuing Resolution legislation without the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022."

Even more remarkable than his own lack of initiative in removing his bill is that his floor remarks completely ignore all Progressive and Democrat criticism of the side deal and frame the situation as one-sided political sabotage from Republican politicians. Schumer said, “Senate Republicans have made clear they will block legislation to fund the government if it includes bipartisan permitting reform, because they’ve chosen to obstruct instead of work in a bipartisan way to achieve something they’ve long claimed they want to do…American families should not be subject to a Republican-manufactured government shutdown…”

I can’t imagine a more depressing scenario than what we observed the last few weeks with Schumer needlessly attempting to pass Big Oil’s agenda over the people’s interest. There couldn’t have been a more dispiriting solution either than Manchin appeasing his Republican allies and his own constituents while Schumer betrayed Mamaroneck and the nation. He has not acknowledged the bipartisan blowback he suffered, waited until Manchin asked to have the side deal removed, and mischaracterized the backlash as only Republican obfuscation. Schumer’s gaslighting remarks remind Democrat voters that they can’t ever fully trust their representatives to be accountable.

While I anxiously wait for the storm season to pass, I’m happy to see bipartisan rejection of the side deal, even if it was only Manchin responding to Republican Senate backlash that removed it. I worry about the future weather conditions in my town and I worry about more Americans like me being ostracized by their own representatives before the 2024 elections where we will undoubtedly again be told to “vote-blue-no-matter-who.”

Schumer declared in a public speech during Hurricane Ida’s aftermath that “there have been far too many times that Mamaroneck has been beaten and battered by storms only to have the federal bureaucracy leave them hanging out to dry. This must stop.”

I hope he can deliver on those words one day…