It’s good politics and good policy to eliminate as many of the act’s remaining environmentalist handouts as possible.
C ongressional Republicans could save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, without risking the threat of Democratic filibuster, by gutting the global warming graft in Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
The portion of Biden’s IRA dedicated to handouts for environmentalist groups is already costing triple the amount that was originally budgeted. And the legislation is very vulnerable to congressional repeal. The IRA was passed under a budget resolution, which means that only simple majority votes in the House and Senate are needed to repeal it. Repeal attempts could not be subjected to a filibuster by Democrats. Moreover, this wouldn’t require a precious reconciliation slot, which removes any excuse for Republican inaction. And perhaps the savings could be put to better use, such as the renewal of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, during reconciliation.
Currently, 21 House Republicans (you know who you are) want to keep certain special-interest green energy tax credits, specifically the Wind Production Tax Credit, in law. But Republicans have already voted 53 times in the House and once in the Senate to repeal the IRA, and no Republican has voted for it. Democrats are well aware of the political vulnerability of their graft.
Biden’s IRA has dedicated more than $1 trillion to grants, loans, and tax credits for wind, solar, and other green energy boondoggles between 2022 and 2031, according to estimates by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. For perspective, that is equivalent to the cost of roughly 80 Ford-class nuclear aircraft carriers (of which the entire U.S. Navy has only eleven). Wharton’s original ten-year estimate for the IRA’s climate-related spending was “only” $385 billion: equivalent to the cost of about 29 new nuclear aircraft carriers. If left unchecked, this “green” spending will be a disaster for the U.S. taxpayer. And only Congress can stop it.
Among the most obviously corrupt parts of the legislation, which Republicans should target for repeal, is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), which essentially outsources the role of the Environmental Protection Agency to various left-wing think tanks and nongovernmental organizations. There’s $780 billion in special tax credits and awards available to anyone associated with environmentalism and politically favored technologies like wind and solar, according to the left-wing Brookings Institution.
Yet 18 Republican House Representatives signed an August 2024 letter to Speaker Mike Johnson asking for some portion of these tax credits to be “spared” from an attempted repeal of the IRA, citing alleged benefits to their districts, even as House conservatives consistently noted that the credits would drive up prices, distort markets, and benefit China.
One problem is that the portion of IRA money that has already been spent is difficult to know. The Internal Revenue Service recently estimated that, by September 2024, it had spent 16 percent of its IRA-provided funds. (That it took 23 weeks for the IRS to generate this estimate, and that comprehensive data on such spending are not consistently reported across federal agencies, says a great deal about government efficiency.) A majority of IRA funds are likely still unspent and can be salvaged if the act is repealed.
Before Biden left office, the White House announced awards for roughly two-thirds of the money, which an EPA appointee at the time characterized as “tossing gold bars off the Titanic,” many of them picked up by Democrats. The most infamous case involves a grant of $2 billion from the EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF) to the Stacey Abrams–linked nongovernmental organization Power Forward Communities, intended for “decarbonizing and transforming American housing.” The group claimed last August that it expected to begin using the $2 billion in early 2025, so clawing that money back might still be possible. Republicans need to act fast before more taxpayer dollars are wasted.
If funds haven’t yet been spent because of executive branch inaction, Congress can pass legislative overrides or rescissions to reallocate them. But perhaps the better option is “reprogramming,” by which Congress could redirect unspent funds to a different purpose within the same appropriation. This would require close coordination with the executive agency managing the relevant funds. In the case of Abrams’s Power Forward Communities, for example, the EPA could simply stop additional funding until Congress reallocates that grant.
Spent funds would be difficult, but perhaps not impossible, to recover. Congress could formally request that the agency that appropriated the funds audit the recipients and perhaps even demand repayment. The GGRF’s and NCIF’s grant awards to nonprofits came with many legal strings attached, and if an audit revealed noncompliance by the recipients, the EPA or Congress could pursue legal action. But repealing the IRA would stop the bleeding.
Eliminating environmentalist graft that only benefits eco-grifters is within Republicans’ power. The only question now is: Will the Grand Old Party have the guts to repeal Biden’s corrupt $1 trillion climate spending?