Adam Pack
Contributor
House Republicans could be leaving hundreds of billions of dollars in potential savings on the table as the GOP conference works to finish a budget deal to extend expiring tax cuts and cut spending, according to one conservative House lawmaker.
Republican Oklahoma Rep. Josh Brecheen, a member of the House Freedom Caucus who sits on the House Budget Committee, said House Republicans should incorporate a full repeal of former President Joe Biden’s misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into a budget reconciliation package, in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation. A full repeal would fulfill President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to roll back the law and offset the cost of other spending priorities in the budget reconciliation package, according to Brecheen. (RELATED: White House Lays Out Policy Priorities For New Faith Office)
However, Brecheen said that current discussions in the House as of Thursday were set at repealing roughly $200 billion of the IRA’s tax credits, which would preserve around $600 billion of the IRA’s green energy subsidies.
A complete repeal of the IRA’s green energy tax credits could allow for up to $796 billion in 10-year savings, according to a House Ways and Means Committee document outlining more than $5 trillion in potential spending cuts first obtained by POLITICO.
Biden signed the IRA into law in August 2022 after the green energy law passed Congress through the budget reconciliation process with no Republican votes. The law has been a frequent target of Republican lawmakers’ ire for distorting energy markets, doling out taxpayer dollars to left-wing activist groups and its skyrocketing costs.
“It was brought in by reconciliation by the Democrats,” Brecheen told the DCNF. “If we don’t do it now [with] a 50-vote threshold for the Senate, it will not get done.”
“Those [leftover subsidies] matter if we’re going to get to energy dominance,” Brecheen added.
Should Congress end the Green New Scam? pic.twitter.com/zHvt5yieee
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) February 6, 2025
But a full repeal of the IRA has many opponents, including solar, wind and large oil companies who are tapping the IRA’s billions of dollars in tax credits for green energy and low-carbon technology projects across the country.
Green energy companies notably lobbied members of Congress Wednesday to preserve tax credits from being completely rescinded or capped in a budget deal.
Completely razing the IRA’s tax credits would also likely face resistance from some Republican lawmakers, which is a clear frustration to GOP members like Brecheen who view a full repeal as essential to ending taxpayers subsidizing uneconomical green energy sources and unwinding wasteful spending.
“Even within the Republican conference, we’re talking about not fully getting rid of taxpayer subsidized wind and solar energy,” Brecheen told the DCNF Thursday. “You’re telling me that just because 18 members of our conference signed a letter saying we’ve got some concerns about doing a full repeal that we shouldn’t go back to them in gentleness and remind them ‘hey, wait a minute: the mandate.’”
Brecheen was referencing a letter from 18 House Republicans sent to Speaker Mike Johnson in August 2024 advocating against a full repeal of Biden’s $1 trillion-plus green energy law. Fourteen members who wrote the letter returned to the House for the 119th Congress and one was elected to the Senate.
The Oklahoma Republican noted that repealing the IRA through budget reconciliation would be fulfilling one of Trump’s campaign promises.
Trump repeatedly vowed to repeal Biden’s $1.2 trillion climate law and rescind all unspent funds on the campaign trail, dubbing the IRA the “Green New Scam” in a speech at the New York Economic Club in September 2024.
“Do we really need it [green energy tax credits] when we talk about energy dominance,” Brecheen questioned. “We need to return to commonsense, reliable, affordable energy.”
“Stop giving wind and solar preferential treatment,” Brecheen continued. “We’re taking away from the many to give to the few.”
House and Senate Republicans are at odds with how to pass Trump’s sweeping legislative agenda through the budget reconciliation process. The Senate prefers a two-bill approach that would allow Republicans to score early wins on border, energy and defense priorities and save extending expiring tax cuts for later in the year. House Republicans, with much tighter margins, favor a one-bill approach that combines all of Trump’s tax and spending priorities into “one, big beautiful bill.”
While the House works through last minute disagreements to finalize a budget resolution — the first major step of the reconciliation process — the Senate pushed ahead to unveil a resolution of their own Friday afternoon, according to a press release put out by Senate Budget Committee chairman Lindsey Graham.
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https://nypost.com/2025/01/19/opinion/climate-change-fanatics-want-to-bankrupt-the-entire-world-for-little-to-no-reward/
the tide is changing ?
Subsidizing weather dependent sources is counterproductive.
From the article: “Stop giving wind and solar preferential treatment,” Brecheen continued. “We’re taking away from the many to give to the few.”
Representative Brecheen is my local representative.
Giving wind and solar preferential treatment drives up the cost of electricity for *everyone*.
No subsidies for wind and solar! This way, wind and solar will fade into history as being a very bad deal for everyone.
Wind and solar and battery backup are failed technologies. Taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for these things.
The reason some big oil companies are promoting these subsidies is because some of these subsidies go to them because they also build wind and solar. Screw them! Let them pay their own way, or get off the electrical grid!
No special subsidies for wind and solar, and no special pricing for wind and solar. Government and taxpayers have no business promoting these technologies.
Wind and solar and battery backup are failed technologies for grid scale applications.
That does not mean there are no niche applications where they work well.
If the economics, supply and demand, the whole ball of wax, let’s the complete cost effectively, then they will. But it is not the Government’s decision what is economical and what is not.
Fine, but they still don’t need to be subsidized.
Joke Biden did unbelievable damage to the USA – just that USAID debacle alone reveals the enemy within is the problem.
Note to fossil fuel energy producers – You can’t have it both ways. If you really believe wind and solar promise a good return on investment, why aren’t you willing to invest your own money instead of taxpayer money?
They just see a way of making money off taxpayer’s money via energy subsidies. Guess their attitude is if the government is stupid enough to provide the subsidies we might as well “get what we can when we can get it” :<)
It’s a situation where the money is going to be given away. It boils down to, do we get the money, or do our competitors get it.
I’m not a congress critter and I’ve never played one on TV, but I would vote for a full repeal of Joe Biden’s misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
There are some good projects proposed that are seeking DOE Loan Guarantees. These are based on using wastes of all types as feedstock for fuel production. Waste gasification produces syngas (CO + H2) which is converted into hydrocarbon fuels such as diesel and jet fuel. There is much waste available from landfills and from agricultural activities including harvesting trees for timber. About 50% of the tree is waste and more is wasted during planting and silviculture (forest management). This is left on the ground to rot.
Aggregating this waste provides rural jobs in our poorest areas so is a viable way to put people to work doing productive and environmentally beneficial tasks. I can see this as a fine use of government resources.
We have a huge low skilled labor force in our cities that need to be redirected from building tent cities and sitting around to something much more productive. What better use for this labor than clearing brushland and forests of debris to help control fires. Meaningful work for homeless people. Sounds like the CCC, but at least they won’t be camping on the streets or sucking up huge sums of taxpayer dollars being housed in hotels. (Musk Claims FEMA Sent $59 Million to Hotels to House Illegal Immigrants in Defiance of Trump Order)
It’s hard enough doing CCC-type programs with motivated people. Homeless people, who are homeless for a wide variety of reasons, most of which also make them difficult to employ, are not good candidates for those types of programs.
And that assumes that a a CCC-type program is cost-effective even for motivated people. If it paid to pick up slash and gasify it, someone in the private sector would be doing it. As someone who has represented developers of these projects, it’s not inexpensive. In most situations, I doubt it can be done without subsidies of some sort, or substantially higher oil prices.
Don’t feed them and/or move them out of the cities and camps-that might motivate them…or they can starve. Cost effectiveness ? How cost effective was burning down Cali?
If the deals are so good, they shouldn’t have any problem getting private investment.
Having to rely on government grants is just proof that there is no market potential there.
Exploding Battery Pack Forces Evacuation: 72 Battery Fires in 2024
Flying with lithium batteries is permitted. If they are “sealed” in a device (i.e. laptop) they can go in checked luggage. If they are loose they must go in the carry on. There is a limit to the power of the batteries (in watt-hours) that can be taken.
I’m wondering how much WH of batteries were in that plane, and how many incidents will result in a ban – still unlikely to include laptops and other such devices.
There are small containers available for small lithium batteries that are “LIPO safe”. My wife made me get them for the batteries in my camera.
Cut it all or cut what you can but don’t get into a senseless pissing match and end up cutting nothing.
From the above article:
“House Republicans could be leaving hundreds of billions of dollars in potential savings on the table as the GOP conference works to finish a budget deal to extend expiring tax cuts and cut spending . . .”
“Hundreds of billions” . . . sounds significant right?
Well, the federal government’s end-FY2024 deficit was over 1800 billion dollars (i.e, over $1.8 trillion).
At present, the US national debt is $36.5 trillion, which would be about 183 times $200 billion dollars.
Updating a quote attributed to former Senator Everett Dirksen: “A
billiontrillion here, abilliontrillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”So, please get back to me when there’s something newsworthy in terms of Federal “potential savings”.
Are you saying to keep funding this taxpayer theft?
genocide Joe had no problem rubbber stamping.
No.
First get the budget under control. $200B is 11% of the 2024 deficit you listed.
A few more such savings and we get to a balanced budget.
That is step 1, which is important. One cannot tackle the debt until one stops adding to the debt.
Really? By my math, it would require nine times “such savings” (IMHO, that’s greater than a “few more”) to get to a balanced budget, assuming the annual deficit doesn’t continuing growing.
My prediction: we will never complete your Step 1.
“My prediction: we will never complete your Step 1″. Your solution appears to be: Don’t even try. Even if we don’t manage to reach 100% of step 1 this go round, every percentage point we can get towards it is better than 0%. 11% seems like as good a start as any. And hopefully in future go rounds we can close the gap even more. We’ll never close that gap if we give up before we’ve even gotten started, like you’ve done.
This is one of the biggest no-brainers in history. Repeal the whole mess. All of it. There is nothing in it worth keeping. Kill it, bury it, and sprinkle its ashes to the wind. It is indicative of the stupidity of our ruling Republicans that they are considering keeping any part of it. It is one of the many Democrat monstrosities of the last 16 years that has massively ballooned the federal budget, with no redeeming value whatsoever beyond suckling the parasitic Democrat lobby.
Don’t forget that what the lefties call traditional biomass ie wood and dung, produces three times the global energy than all the windmills and solar panels in the world. Disgraceful