Republicans Want to Undo the Actual Energy Boom

By Dave Levitan | May 13, 2025 | 9:50am

Photo via The White House/Wikimedia Commons

Climate Inflation Reduction Act

Republicans Want to Undo the Actual Energy Boom

Republicans in the House of Representatives have unveiled legislation that would effectively gut the Inflation Reduction Act, ending renewable energy and electric vehicle credits and attempting to claw back various climate-related funding the bill has unleashed. In a very real sense, it is an attempt to stop the actual energy and manufacturing progress the country was making, under an administration that continually claims to be “unleashing” American energy. Like so many moves out of this White House, it is a literal step backward.

Since the IRA’s passage in the summer of 2022, companies have invested more than $300 billion on clean energy-related projects and products; more than $500 billion more, though, is still in the planned or promised investment stage, and an enormous chunk of that would likely disappear if the GOP plans go through. Though obviously this would knock a hole in the US’s attempts — such as they are — to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it also would mean an enormous self-inflicted economic hit. Per one solar power company’s CEO, the country could be looking at “huge employment loss and waves of bankruptcies.”

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The chair of the House ways and means committee Jason Smith said the new bill “delivers on what Americans voted for with President Trump’s promise to put America First.” It is hard to deal with people willing to say the literal opposite of the clear reality — in this case that American manufacturing and jobs that were on a clear upward trajectory will in fact disappear. Mix in this sort of uber-lie with the Extremely Online nonsense speak that is sort of a prerequisite for entry at this point, and you get the theoretically most powerful people in the country sounding like broken children: “[It] ends special interest giveaways and will hold the woke elite and entities that benefit from the tax code accountable.”

Of course, while trying to end these “special interest giveaways” that in reality were, uh, companies building factories in large part in red states, the administration has leaned on a fake energy “emergency” to dispense with environmental review laws to let fossil fuel companies dig and drill as fast as possible. The hypocrisy inherent to these combinations of moves — there’s an emergency but also solar power companies should go bankrupt immediately — literally doesn’t matter to them. There is a shamelessness baked into the modern GOP, hardened in the kiln of Trump’s own never-wrong mentality, that allows for the most glaring absurdities to be uttered with a straight face.

Of course, while Republicans in Congress universally embrace that degree of up-is-down disinformation, some of them do understand what the IRA has done for their districts. Earlier this month 26 GOP members sent a letter to Smith asking him to maintain some of the credits and subsidies in the IRA; according to the New York Times, more than three-quarters of that $500-plus billion in pending investments are in Republican-held Congressional districts. The party is likely willing to put thousands or millions of its own constituents out of work in order to undo policies Democrats like.

The bill is set for markup on Tuesday, and there is still plenty of bickering to be done before a final version emerges. But if anything resembling the existing text goes through, it will be another giant leap toward American decline.

“The Ways and Means bill is at odds with American energy dominance,” said American Clean Power Association CEO Jason Grumet, in a statement. “If adopted, the proposed language will raise energy costs for American consumers, force American factories to shut their doors, and threaten American jobs.”