ICYMI: E&E News “Schumer vows climate action if Dems sweep in November”

Washington, D.C. – At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer highlighted climate action as a critical priority if Democrats gain a trifecta in Washington, D.C. Majority Leader Schumer also joined Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and New Jersey Representative Andy Kim at a “Climate Voters Go All In” event to discuss how Donald Trump would drag our climate progress backward. 

The climate stakes of the 2024 election couldn’t be higher – and Democrats are making sure that fact is in sharp focus this week.

E&E: Schumer vows climate action if Dems sweep in November

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer thinks it’s possible Democrats regain their governing trifecta in the November elections — and at the top of his agenda would be another stab at federal climate legislation.

“We would go back to the environment,” the New York Democrat on Tuesday morning told a small group of reporters gathered in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention.

Schumer said Democrats would return to the budget reconciliation process if their party swept control of the House, Senate and White House — a maneuver that allows a majority to bypass the Senate filibuster to advance party-line legislation and that was used in 2022 to pass the Inflation Reduction Act.

The IRA constituted the most ambitious federal climate investment in history, and Democrats have been going through pains to message effectively on its benefits this election season.

But climate hawks have also openly lamented that it fell short of their most grand ambitions at the start of the IRA negotiations, back when it was called “Build Back Better.”

Schumer didn’t get specific about what he wanted a climate-focused reconciliation bill to include a second time around but said he would like to see policies to zero out carbon emissions in the next 25 years. Big ticket items to fall to the wayside two years ago included a fully-funded Civilian Climate Corps and a Clean Electricity Performance Program.

“My North Star in doing the IRA … was 40 percent reduction in the amount of carbon that goes into the atmosphere by 2030,” he told reporters. “We’d like to get it to zero by 2050, and I think we can in a reconciliation bill. It’s very important.”

The senior Democrat’s climate ambitions for another reconciliation package could be furthered in the event Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who has made climate change the centerpiece of his current chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee, decides to keep that gavel in the next Congress.

While he has a chance to take the reins of the Environment and Public Works Committee with the upcoming retirement of Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Whitehouse has told POLITICO’s E&E News he might be inclined to remain atop the Budget panel to ensure the reconciliation blueprint provides for the largest climate investment possible.

Republicans, for their part, are preparing budget reconciliation plans of their own. If they win the elections, the GOP would seek to extend 2018 tax cuts. IRA provisions would also be on the chopping block.

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