by Nick Pope
House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Tuesday that he would try to salvage some of the green energy subsidies enacted under President Joe Biden’s signature climate bill if given the chance.
The elected Republicans are divided on whether to pursue the complete repeal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and in particular its green energy subsidiesIf the party can secure enough leverage in the 2024 election, Johnson said CNBC on Tuesday that he would prefer to approach potential repeal efforts with “a scalpel, not a hammer.”
“You have to use a scalpel, not a sledgehammer, because there are some provisions in there that have helped overall,” Johnson told CNBC. He added that much of what is in the bill was “terribly bad for the economy,” but the speaker did not specify to newsrooms which IRA provisions he would like to protect and which ones he would like to repeal if he had the chance.
JANET YELLEN: “The Inflation Reduction Act, at its heart, is about turning the climate crisis into an economic opportunity.”
Fantastic, what does the Inflation Control Act do to curb inflation? photo:twitter.com/btsHoG3qd0
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 4, 2023
Before his CNBC interview, Johnson delivered a political talk Tuesday speech at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) in Washington, where he described the IRA as an “inflation bill” and promised to cut at least some of the spending associated with the bill.
“We will cut wasteful Green New Deal spending in the Democrats’ so-called inflation-control bill, which costs twice as much as advertised and sends our taxpayer money to China,” Johnson said in his speech at AFPI.
Johnson’s comments to CNBC echo August’s main story letter sent to him by 18 Republicans urging the speaker to keep some IRA subsidies — which became law without a single Republican vote — if the GOP has a chance to pursue repeal efforts. There are other members of the Republican caucus who did not sign the letter but are thinking along the same lines, According to to E&E News.
In addition, the Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, two powerful interest groups, also get ready to protect some IRA grants, if needed. IRAs could play an vital role in the upcoming tax negotiations, which are set to take place in 2025, when key provisions of former President Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expireaccording to CNBC.
Trump repeatedly attacked the IRA during the election campaign and declared recover unspent funds and essentially kill IRA Supported wind on the sea for example projects. Initial forecasts IRA energy tax breaks were expected to cost nearly $400 billion, but the final cost could be much higher, according to calculations by Goldman Sachs predicted in April 2023 that the loans could ultimately cost $1.2 trillion over ten years.
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Nick Pope is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Announcer Mike Johnson” by Chairman Mike Johnson.
