Will GOP senators save Biden's energy tax credits?

Politico

4 hours ago

Moderate House Republicans failed last month when the chamber voted to gut the clean energy tax credits that they had spent months urging their leaders to save.
Now the fight is getting real in the Senate, where Republicans unhappy with the cuts have the leverage to reshape President Donald Trump's megabill — if they choose to, writes Kelsey Brugger.
GOP Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia — to name but a few — all told Kelsey they will seek significant changes to the budget reconciliation package ahead of their party's self-imposed July 4 deadline. Senate Republicans can afford to lose only three votes without tanking the bill.
The party-line bill that the House passed May 22 would dramatically roll back Biden-era incentives for wind, solar, hydrogen and other clean energy sources. The cuts are expected to render useless hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits from Democrats' 2022 climate law, even though they benefit many Republican-held districts.
'Every one of [the credits] is going to have some sort of extension' in the Senate version, Tillis told Kelsey.
GOP House members who tepidly and unsuccessfully opposed the tax rollbacks lent their support to the new effort.
'We believe the Senate now has a critical opportunity to restore common sense,' a group of 13 representatives wrote in a letter to Senate leaders urging them to 'substantially and strategically' fix the House-passed language.
Conservatives were quick to respond.
'You backslide one inch on those [Inflation Reduction Act] subsidies, and I'm voting against this bill,' said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of the far-right House Freedom Caucus' most vocal members. That could be fatal for the bill when it returns to the House, where the vote last time was 215-214.
The conservative Club for Growth has been taking out ads against some Senate Republicans, accusing Murkowski and Jerry Moran of Kansas of falling for a 'big liberal mistake' in seeking to preserve some of the Biden-era policies, and even accusing Kevin Cramer of North Dakota of 'betraying' Trump.
How senators ultimately treat Biden's clean energy tax credits will be included in the Senate Finance Committee's section of the bill, which might not emerge until next week.
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The entire staff at the climate office within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was laid off. And across other agencies, heat specialists have accepted deferred resignation offers. Some were fired because their work involved racial equity issues. Still others, after being ordered to cut communication with the public about the health risks of heat, decided they could help more people if they retired early.
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The news came at the third United Nations Conference on the Oceans in Nice, France. The United States did not participate, an absence that did not go unnoticed. A State Department spokesperson said the conference is 'at odds' with positions held by the current U.S. administration.
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