Pirate's Cove

But, can they actually get this out of the Senate?

House GOP looks to gut Biden’s climate incentives in megabill proposal

House Republicans are proposing a significant rollback of Democrats’ clean energy tax credits— a key step toward fulfilling President Donald Trump’s pledge to eviscerate President Joe Biden’s landmark climate change programs.

The tax-writing Ways and Means Committee is moving to repeal key subsidies for electric vehicles and phase out many other clean energy tax incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act — derided by Trump as the “Green New Scam” — as part of its highly anticipated portion of the GOP’s megabill.

The tax incentives made up the core of the IRA’s clean energy stimulus, and were estimated to cost about $370 billion by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation over the decade until they expired in 2032, though other analyses predicted their costs would exceed $1 trillion. The incentives have sparked hundreds of billions in private sector investment in clean energy since the law was enacted.

As part of the Ways and Means Committee’s contributions to the party-line package intended to enact broad swaths of Trump’s domestic agenda, GOP leaders are seeking to satisfy conservative hardliners who want to eliminate all the energy incentives under the climate law to pay for trillions of dollars in tax cuts. But they are also looking to keep the support of moderates who fear scrapping these credits will jeopardize the jobs associated with manufacturing and power generation projects in their red states and districts.

The proposal would preserve some IRA tax credits, including the advanced manufacturing production tax credit, known as 45X — though wind energy components would no longer be eligible after 2027. It would, as well, maintain credits supporting carbon capture, while extending subsidies benefiting biofuels that are backed by the fossil fuel and agriculture industries — which a group of House Republicans successfully defended in 2023.

I’ll be honest, just keep the EV rebates. It’s hurting anything, and, come on, this costs nothing. It just means less inflow of tax money. And, really, it’s not all that much. Is it worth the fight to ditch them? Not really. It also doesn’t hurt to keep tax credits for solar and wind. Hell, let’s extend it to hydro! Carbon capture can go. The biofuels garbage needed to be cut decades ago.

There really is nothing wrong with intentivizing clean energy. Forcing it on citizens is something completely different. If the GOP tries this it will never make it past the Senate. Democrats, and a few squishy Republicans, will block it. Pick your fight.