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It’s been three years since Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act without the support of any Republicans. That includes the 14 House Republicans who signed a letter last month asking GOP leadership to please tweak plans to kill the IRA’s clean-energy incentives in the mega-bill they are shepherding for Donald Trump.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]While much of the talk in Washington right now is about pitfalls aplenty in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the rollback of Biden-era clean-energy efforts is getting scant attention. Yet many voters are likely to notice the fallout from those changes, particularly in swing districts that will decide control of the House next year.
Take the districts those 14 House Republicans represent. Thirteen of them voted for the House bill (Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York missed the vote) despite provisions that could mean the loss of $40 billion in investment and 43,000 jobs in their districts collectively, according to a report from the nonpartisan Rhodium Group, which publishes quarterly updates on green jobs. Nationally, the rollbacks threaten 830,000 jobs connected to clean-energy projects.
Despite the economic downsides, GOP leaders are moving ahead with a tax-and-spending bill that would wind down tax credits for cleaner cars like electric vehicles by the end of this year, scrap incentives for battery makers by 2028, and levy a new annual fee on drivers who opt into lower-emission vehicles (purportedly to replace lost gasoline taxes). At the same time, clean-energy manufacturers would see their tax credits go dark by 2031, and lower-emissions energy projects like wind, nuclear, and solar would lose their incentives in 2032. Across the country, job-creating projects currently in development would no longer make economic sense.
While Elon Musk, the billionaire former White House budget adviser, is complaining about the bill’s price tag—calling it “a disgusting abomination”—less-MAGA conversant Republicans are quietly raising their own parochial worries.
The numbers are real. For instance, in Rep. Jen Kiggans’ Virginia district, which is based in the Hampton Roads region, about $11.3 billion in funding is at risk. That means about 2,005 jobs, an estimate based on announced projects that were not yet online as of March 31, the end of the first quarter of the year.
Kiggans has been out front urging changes to the work her fellow Republicans have been doing, organizing the letter to colleagues asking they tweak their repeal language to give more flexibility on projects. “We appreciate the Ways and Means Committee putting America first by investing in American energy dominance, but the last thing any of us want is to provoke an energy crisis or cause higher energy bills for working families,” they wrote on May 14.
These lawmakers have already seen the upside from the three-year-old incentives. In Rep. Mark Amodei’s Nevada district, constituents were expecting a total of $15.2 billion in clean-energy investments, but $7.6 billion of that is pending and now at risk. In Rep. Dan Newhouse’s Washington district, the expected $5.4 billion in clean investments could be $4.5 billion less under the new proposal. And the list goes on for district after district, from coast to coast.
The full House passed Trump’s tax cuts on May 22, and the White House is pushing the Senate to follow suit before the July 4 holiday. But Senate Republicans have signaled that they’re going to shave off some of the parts of the House version they don’t love, and there are plenty of signs that it’s in more trouble than Trump appreciates. The sticking points drawing the most heat include work requirements and deep cuts to Medicaid, and the expected addition of trillions to the national debt.
Democrats, for their part, are laying the groundwork to see Republicans blamed for any downsides, including an economic hit from the US opting out of a green energy boom.
“The clean-energy credits that were part of the Inflation Reduction Act actually have had a significant benefit in terms of economic activity all across the country, particularly in red states and congressional districts represented by Republicans,” Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Tuesday during his weekly session with Hill reporters. “Standing up a clean-energy economy lowers energy costs, helps to protect the environment, and combats the climate crisis with the fierce urgency of now that is necessary, while at the same period of time creating jobs and generating economic activity. Republicans decided that they want to detonate these clean-energy credits.”
So far, it’s been a message that has started to reach some corners of Washington, which only now is starting to grasp what all was in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. The more lawmakers are looking, the more they’re realizing their quest to unspool parts of the Biden legacy is threatening policies that might have been called “pro-business” by some Trump allies—if only those ideas had originated with Republicans.
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