| Republican lawmakers will soon have the power to carve up Democrats’ landmark climate law — something they’ve been hungry to do since it passed in 2022. But as the reality of clawing back hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy tax breaks sinks in, some GOP lawmakers and business groups are amplifying their concerns that such a move might be a big mistake, write Andres Picon and Emma Dumain. The brewing discord is just one point of contention bubbling within the GOP, threatening to undermine the party’s ability to swiftly deliver President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda. With thin margins in the House and Senate, there is little wiggle room as leadership tries to wrangle members with varied priorities. Republican lawmakers whose districts stand to benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act have been making noise for a while now, but party strife intensified this week when incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune laid out a plan to pass sweeping legislation on taxes, energy and immigration. Thune wants two bills: the first on energy and immigration, and the second on taxes. That angered some members of his party who want to tackle taxes first and others who say a tax bill will have a better shot if it's included in a larger package. Still other lawmakers were upset that Thune plans to include a provision in the first bill that would roll back the IRA’s $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit and other clean energy incentives. The law’s investments have prompted clean energy companies to flock to numerous red states, creating jobs and boosting local economies. Georgia Republican Rep. Buddy Carter, whose district is home to a Hyundai EV manufacturing plant that has received $5.5 billion from the IRA, said his party’s approach should be more targeted and less sweeping. “I think that they understand that there may be parts of it that can help us secure our supply chain. There may be parts of it that help us with domestic manufacturing,” Carter said. “And if there are, then we should look at keeping it.” Businesses hoping to continue benefiting from the climate law’s energy and manufacturing incentives — such as Avangrid and Samsung — also took to the Hill this week, where they met with lawmakers to push back against possible cuts. Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, who is retiring as chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, compared the IRA to the Affordable Care Act — an initially polarizing law that gained bipartisan backing as policymakers, businesses and individuals reaped benefits. “Oh, they’ll try” to repeal clean energy incentives, Carper predicted, “but market forces actually took place with the ACA and saved it, and market forces will do the same with IRA.”
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