Republicans' ‘clearly unprecedented' gambit to kill climate programs
House Republicans want to use their sprawling budget reconciliation bill not only to zero out climate programs — but also to make it harder for subsequent Congresses to restore them.
The budget bill the House Energy and Commerce Committee released Sunday night would pull back about $6.5 billion in unspent grant funding for green energy finance, clean manufacturing, community pollution abatement and carbon-cutting projects at ports and schools.
It would also repeal the authorizing language for the 17 programs that it targets.
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Bill Hoagland, who served as director of budget and appropriations for former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), called that move 'clearly unprecedented.'
'I have never seen in my career any reconciliation language that would strike authorization language for a discretionary program,' he said.
The gambit is risky, given the strict rules of the budget reconciliation process. But it would have some practical advantages for Republicans if it succeeds.
A subsequent Congress and administration would have a harder time restoring funding for programs like EPA's $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund or $7 billion Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program — both of which the Energy and Commerce proposal would terminate.
'It's always better to still have authorizations on the books, because it's always easier to get funding for existing authorizations instead of starting from a complete blank slate,' said Adrian Deveny, a former aide for Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
The repeals would also let Republicans claim credit for killing programs they've decried as wasteful and corrupt, even as they rescind only a fraction of the programs' funding. The Energy and Commerce Committee is not attempting to claw back the lion's share of grants, which are already under contract; committee spokesman Ben Mullany said Monday that the panel would 'continue to honor the obligated funds.'
Language to repeal program authorizations may survive the House. But Hoagland said it probably won't square with the Senate's strict rules for the kinds of policy provisions that can move through budget reconciliation.
Republicans are using the reconciliation process to move their bill to avoid a filibuster by Senate Democrats. It's the same maneuver Democrats used in 2022 to enact the climate spending law, because it allows legislation to pass the Senate with a simple majority vote.
But Senate rules extend this privilege only to provisions that raise or spend revenue. And while the Energy and Commerce language rescinding unspent climate law dollars will pass muster, experts say the deauthorization language probably won't.
'Striking language that simply authorizes appropriations but doesn't do anything to appropriate funds doesn't have any budgetary impact, and that therefore violates the Byrd rule,' said Hoagland, referring to a long-established procedural rule named for the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), a former chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The rule prohibits the inclusion of 'extraneous' policy provisions in a bill that moves through reconciliation.
But whether or not Republicans succeed in revoking program authorizations, supporters of the climate law say the loss of unobligated funds will have consequences.
EPA, for example, has already obligated much of the money the climate law appropriated for grant programs. What's left at the agency is mostly its grant-management and oversight budgets — which were small to begin with.
'Members of Congress expect programs to be implemented and crises addressed even when the budget for staff is cut,' said Zealan Hoover, a former Biden administration official who led Inflation Reduction Act implementation at EPA. 'If I was still at EPA I would be very worried about the volume of angry Hill calls coming if anything close to this budget is enacted.'
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