MEMO: This Republican Rate Hike is going to bite those who vote for it.

TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Pete Maysmith, President, League of Conservation Voters and Lori Lodes, President, Climate Power
RE: This Republican Rate Hike is going to bite those who vote for it. 

If Congressional Republicans jam through the disastrous mess of a Big Ugly Bill—raising costs for families while giving billionaires another handout— they should expect a fierce backlash from their constituents. And we will be there every single day to remind people that Republicans in Congress chose Washington politicians and billionaires over American families.  

A potent and easy-to-understand attack – By focusing on the many different ways that the bill will cause economic pain for people around the country who are already feeling betrayed by the failure to address their concerns will be a powerful and simple attack on those who vote for it. 

This bill is a triple threat to Republicans:

1. Broken promises: Americans are being crushed by rising costs—and Republicans promised to help. Instead, they’re squandering time and political capital on a wish list for Big Oil and billionaires. Voters won’t forget who chose tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy over real solutions for families.
2. Making life more expensive: Not only are they not addressing current pain, this legislation will make a bad situation much worse. Energy demand is surging in America because of AI, data centers and extreme heat. Ninety three percent of all new capacity last year came from solar, wind and batteries. By targeting American clean energy with a new energy tax, they are choking off local energy supply at the exact time we need more—not less. Data, and plain old common sense, says this will further spike monthly utility bills for families and businesses across the country. 
3. The bill is deeply unpopular: Five recent polls show a majority of Americans disapprove of the Republicans’ reconciliation bill. This makes it, according to CNN, “more unpopular than any piece of major legislation passed since at least 1990.”

–and that’s before people have started feeling its impacts. 

Congressional Republicans are breaking “one of the most durable rules of Congressional behavior: don’t vote against the economic interests of your own district.” Between its unpopularity and negative impacts back at home, Republicans have arguably never made a more blatant choice to put Washington politics over the people they were elected to represent. 

Our message is simple if this moves forward: Republicans in Congress voted to make everything more expensive—while doing nothing to improve people’s lives.

Every factory that closes.
Every job lost.
Every family hit with higher bills.

All will serve as daily reminders of the choice Congressional Republicans made. And while Republicans have made efforts to hide the impacts of their health care attacks by delaying some until after the midterms, the utility bill hikes and factory closings will begin almost immediately after passage.

It Isn’t just utility bills – This bill will make health care more costly and harder to come by,  pricier to buy groceries—compounding the economic strain on working families. As polling shows, the most effective argument is simple and devastating: 

“Americans are already struggling with high prices. This bill—along with Trump’s tariffs—will make it worse by stoking inflation, raising interest rates, and forcing people to pay more for healthcare, food, and energy.” (Families Over Billionaires, CAP Action, Protect Our Care, 6/4/25) 

We, along with partner organizations and entities, are prepared to respond with a nationwide campaign that connects the dots about this bill —from higher grocery prices to slashed clean energy jobs to rising utility bills. Our message will be tailored district by district, rooted in the real harm this bill causes. 

Republicans in Congress face the same choice as Thom Tillis and Don Bacon when it comes to their historically unpopular Republican Rate Hike bill: vote to prevent energy costs from skyrocketing, or vote to send bills soaring and face defeat in 2026. Having run on promises to lower costs, if Republicans ignore reality by hiking rates to fund tax breaks for billionaires, their constituents will hear about it again, and again, and again between now and November of next year.

Climate Power and LCV have launched a new joint national ad campaign urging members of Congress to vote no on the Republican Rate Hike included in the congressional reconciliation bill. Here you can find more information on our campaign.

LCV, Climate Power and the rest of the climate community are prepared to spend millions more on air while mobilizing concerned constituents on the ground in-district to ensure that the public understands what this bill does. 

Republicans voting for this bill aren’t just backing bad policy—they’re signing up for a political reckoning. In each of the last two midterms, the climate community’s electoral entities invested over $100 million to help elect or protect pro-climate majorities.