ICYMI: Politico, House Republican support grows for keeping clean energy tax breaks

Washington, D.C. — Today, Politico reported that 21 House Republicans have signed a letter voicing support for clean energy tax breaks. The news comes as essential clean energy tax credits are on the chopping block for the GOP’s budget bill. 

Politico: House Republican support grows for keeping clean energy tax breaks

A growing number of House Republicans are urging the party to preserve the clean energy tax credits in Democrats’ climate law — and warning they may oppose the party’s budget bill if those incentives get axed.

In a letter shared exclusively with POLITICO, 21 House Republicans — whose districts have drawn billions in new investments because of the Inflation Reduction Act incentives — said developing clean energy was critical for the U.S. to meet President Donald Trump’s goal of becoming “energy dominant.” And they threatened to resist their colleagues’ efforts to gut the law to help pay for a small fraction of the GOP’s multi-trillion-dollar tax-cut package.

“We have 20-plus members saying, ‘Don’t just think you can repeal these things and have our support,’” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), who organized the letter.

The growing pushback against eliminating the IRA’s hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits and other incentives — which have largely benefited GOP-controlled districts — will complicate efforts by House Republicans to slash federal outlays without shrinking Medicaid spending as they seek to offset the tax cuts in their budget bill.

“We need the projects that are currently under development to be brought online so we can continue the President’s ‘America First’ agenda,” added Garbarino, who previously led a letter last fall with 17 other Republicans urging leadership not to gut the credits. “These [credits] are helping the president accomplish what he said he wanted to do in his campaign, and that was to make America an energy dominant country.”

…In the new letter, which the Republicans framed to appeal to Trump, the lawmakers warn that repealing certain tax credits “would increase utility bills the very next day.” They said the incentives are helping to boost manufacturing and energy production that will help meet the growing power demand from a fleet of planned artificial intelligence data centers.

They note that “many credits were enacted over the course of a ten-year period, which allowed energy developers to plan with these tax incentives in mind.”

That means that even if Republicans stop short of a full repeal, and instead choose to phase out credits or otherwise restrict them to reduce their cost, there would be consequences for electricity ratepayers, the lawmakers said…

Republican leaders, however, have signaled they are full steam ahead on examining cuts to the IRA.

“Everything [in the IRA] is on the table in the sense that we’re looking at it, nothing has been decided,” Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said in a brief interview.

And Johnson indicated late last month that he’s likely to go beyond his previous plan to take a “scalpel” to the IRA.

“It’s gonna be somewhere between a scalpel and a sledgehammer,” the speaker told reporters at the time. “We’ll have to see.”