Republicans Sell out Constituents, Vote to Cut Jobs and Raise Energy Costs Nationwide
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Washington, D.C. – Last week, Republicans in the House voted to pass a bill that will kill hundreds of thousands of jobs in their own districts and cause energy costs to skyrocket. Amidst surging demand for energy to power data centers and AI, if Republicans in the Senate move forward with the House bill that repeals the 2022 clean energy tax credits, they are about to see their own constituents’ costs soar, jobs lost, and investment shipped overseas to China. As Ronald Brownstein wrote in Bloomberg last week, Republicans are “testing one of the most durable rules of Congressional behavior: don’t vote against the economic interests of your own district.”
Below is a roundup of how Republicans in the House and Senate will see catastrophic impacts in their own states and districts if they move forward with the clean energy repeal bill:
Bloomberg Opinion: Brownstein: House Republicans Are Ignoring the First Rule of Political Survival
“Climate Power, an environmental group, calculates that 29 House Republicans represent districts that have each received at least $2 billion in clean energy investments since the IRA’s passage, with another 18 holding seats that have benefited from between $1 billion and $2 billion. In all, 152 Republican-held districts have received $200 billion in clean energy investment since the IRA’s passage, nearly half the nationwide total.
The Senate story is similar. The Rhodium Group, an independent policy consultancy, and the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research recently tabulated which states have gained the most jobs from post-IRA clean tech investments and which are on track to gain even more. States with Republican senators are heavily represented on both lists.”
Washington Post: Clean energy cash gushing into red states puts GOP senators in a bind
“In all, the bill would take away $522 billion that is scheduled to be injected into local economies across the country.
“The majority of the government spending is creating jobs and manufacturing capacity in red states,” said Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. “So this puts Republicans, generally and now in the Senate, in the position of having to choose whether to support the party line or maintain support for government programs that are creating a lot of economic activity in their states.” […]
The subsidies have sparked billions of dollars’ worth of projects nationwide, but a Washington Post analysis last year found that most of the investments are flowing to red states.
In Tillis’s home state of North Carolina, the law has helped attract $23 billion in investment, according to data compiled by Atlas Public Policy and Utah State University. Forty-seven new facilities in the state — including a massive Toyota battery plant — could create about 20,000 new jobs, the data shows.
Now, analysts and advocates say, such projects could collapse or relocate abroad. The cuts also threaten the stability of the power grid, which is heavily reliant on solar and wind power.
“If this bill becomes law, America will effectively surrender the AI race to China and communities nationwide will face blackouts,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, one of many groups lobbying the Senate to change course.”
“In the House they eviscerated our clean energy future. They took the IRA – the bill from 2022 that has unleashed a clean energy revolution in our country – and they have for all intents and purposes, killed it. But, unfortunately for Senators from red states, they are going to have to deal with the fact that $642 billion – 75% of all of the money from the IRA has gone to red states, and only $182 billion – 25%, to blue states. So the jobs, by hundreds of thousands are being created, are going to red states.
So if you are a red state governor or mayor, you are going to have a senator who is going to be looking very closely at the harm that they are going to inflict upon their major city or on the long term economic growth in their state. This is basically jobs of the future, careers of the future that are opening up [in] vast numbers all across red states. And it’s going to be very difficult, I think, for some of these Republican senators to be able to easily vote for this bill.”
New York Times: A Clean Energy Boom Was Just Starting. Now, a Republican Bill Aims to End It.
“Sprawling wind farms in Wyoming. A huge solar factory expansion in Georgia. Lithium mines in Nevada. Vacuums that suck carbon from the air in Louisiana.
Over the past three years, companies have made plans to invest more than $843 billion across the United States in projects aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions, driven by lucrative tax credits for clean energy provided by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. […]
If the tax credits are completely rescinded, it would sharply reduce future demand for electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels and wind turbines, according to projections by the Rhodium Group. The effect would be compounded if the Trump administration moved forward as planned with undoing Biden-era tailpipe pollution limits for cars and trucks, which would have pushed automakers to sell more electric vehicles.”
“A Republican push to dismantle clean energy incentives threatens to reverberate across the US by costing more than 830,000 jobs, raising energy bills for US households and threatening to unleash millions more tonnes of the planet-heating pollution that is causing the climate crisis, experts have warned.
A major tax bill passed by the Republican-held House of Representatives on Thursday morning will, as currently written, demolish key components of climate legislation signed by Joe Biden that has spurred a record torrent of renewable energy and electric vehicle investment in the US. […]
“This bill is worse than what people envisioned – it pulls the rug out from facilities banking on these incentives, it raises everyday household costs by hundreds of dollars and undercuts any sort of action on climate change,” said Robbie Orvis, senior director at Energy Innovation, a non-partisan climate policy thinktank.”
ABC News: How the GOP tax bill could impact sustainability efforts
“Full-scale repeal of current credits “could lead to significant disruptions” in [four states represented by Republican senators], the senators — led by Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — said in a letter on April 9. Billions of dollars in clean energy manufacturing investments from the Biden-era subsidies have benefitted Republican-led states and Congressional districts, Campaigne said. […]
Up to 330,000 jobs could be at risk, and electricity bills for families and businesses could increase by $51 billion, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
“This bill threatens the clean energy industry at a time when it’s proving to be not only economically beneficial—lowering costs, creating jobs, and fueling local economies—but also essential to America’s energy future,” Andrew Reagan, president of of Clean Energy for America, said in a statement.”
Energysage: 400,000 American jobs at risk if clean energy credits are cut
“The GOP’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill” is threatening the livelihood of 400,000 working Americans, according to a new report from Climate Power.
While the current version parades itself as a pro-family, pro-small-business bill, its marketing thinly veils its true nature: Legislation designed to support big corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
Who will the bill hurt the most? Workers who live in Republican-held districts, according to Climate Power.”