The Republican Party has been able to repeal climate provisions enacted by the Inflation Reduction Act, the marquee legislation signed by President Joe Biden, but has left other parts of the landmark bill untouched three years on.

Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law on Aug. 16, 2022, after Democrats passed it following months of negotiations between liberals and centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (WV).

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The legislation was billed as addressing inflation, which at the time was soaring to the highest rates in decades. In reality, it authorized major new spending on initiatives long sought by Democrats. Most notably, it included hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for clean energy programs. Biden touted it as the “most significant legislation in history to tackle the climate crisis.” The bill also included major new healthcare provisions sought by Democrats, and was financed by tax hikes on corporations and investors.

The clean energy provisions of the bill, in particular, have been significantly repealed by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed on July 4 — a major blow to Biden’s legislative legacy.

Other parts of the bill remain, and now appear to be firmly ensconced in federal law, at least for the near term. Here is the full rundown.

Clean energy

The OBBBA repeals more than $500 billion of IRA clean energy tax credits over the next decade, as well as billions for clean energy programs. The spending cuts helped offset other aspects of the Republican bill that add to the deficit, namely tax cuts and new spending on immigration enforcement and defense.

Specifically, the bill eliminates credits of up to $7,500 for the purchase of electric vehicles as well as up to $4,000 for used electric vehicles. The credits will now conclude at the end of September. The tax credits were intended to boost EV adoption, but the Trump administration has strongly opposed incentives or policies to increase the EV industry. 

The bill phased out tax credits for solar and wind energy, requiring projects to begin construction within one year or be operational by 2027 to be eligible for the production or investment tax credit. 

The Trump administration has heavily criticized both industries and last month directed the Treasury Department to strictly enforce the termination of the credits. The department issued new stringent regulations on Friday.

Many fiscal conservatives had sought a complete repeal of the clean energy tax credits. That goal was not met. For nuclear power, geothermal power, and hydropower — sources of energy valued by the Trump administration because they can provide “baseload” power that does not vary with the wind or sun — the IRA tax credits were untouched or have a longer phase-out period. The OBBBA also increased subsidies for biofuels.

The OBBBA also further departed from the clean-energy agenda by including provisions to increase domestic oil and gas development by mandating lease sales on federal lands and waters. Specifically, it would require two lease sales in the Gulf of America, formally known as the Gulf of America, and would also mandate quarterly lease sales onshore and sales in Alaska.

Overall, the course of federal energy policy has taken a dramatic turn.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act has positioned the federal government to encourage investment in traditional fossil fuel projects,” James Bowe, a partner at King & Spalding who focuses on energy, said via email.

“One result of the [OBBBA] enactment and related changes in federal energy policy has been an upsurge in new natural gas and liquified natural gas project development, the revival of several large natural gas pipeline projects and a rush to develop new gas-fired generating facilities,” he added. “From the federal government’s perspective, renewables are out, and oil, gas and even coal are now back in.”

Drug price negotiation program

The IRA created the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, advancing the long-sought liberal goal of having the government negotiate prices for drugs it purchases.

Although the drug pricing program is hated by the pharmaceutical industry and many conservatives, it has survived. The Trump administration appears to be using the negotiation authority until larger plans for lowering drug costs take shape.

The provision in the IRA gives the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator the authority to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies to set the prices for the most expensive prescription medications for the Medicare program that do not have other “bona fide” generics on the market. 

Last August, the Biden administration announced the negotiated prices for the 10 drugs selected during the first round of negotiations started in 2023. At the time, CMS estimated the new prices would save the Medicare program $6 billion annually. 

Those new prices, for drugs like heart medications Jardiance and Eliquis and Crohn’s Disease drug Stelara, are set to take effect Jan. 1, 2026.

This January, the outgoing Biden CMS announced 15 new drugs up for negotiations with prices to take effect in 2027. That list included the Danish pharmaceutical juggernaut Novo Nordisk’s diabetes and weight loss drugs Ozempic, Wegovy, and Rybelsus. 

Trump CMS administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz has not yet announced whether the prices for those 15 drugs have been negotiated yet. But, during his Senate confirmation hearing in March, he said that the negotiation program was the law of the land and that he would “defend it and use it.” 

The OBBBA did make changes to the program, but only at the margin. It clarified rules for so-called “orphan drugs” that treat one or more rare diseases. These orphan drugs are now fully exempt from the negotiation program, with the intention of encouraging pharmaceutical companies to invest in cures or treatments for rare diseases. 

More generally, though, the Trump administration has taken a heavy-handed approach to pressuring drugmakers to lower prices.

In May, Trump signed an executive order seeking to implement the “Most Favored Nation” policy, whereby the government pays prices for drugs that are tied to the prices paid by other countries, in an attempt to rectify the issue of American consumers shouldering the costs of research and development. 

If pharmaceutical companies do not voluntarily comply, the executive order gives Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the authority to propose rules and restrictions on manufacturers and imports.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai told the Washington Examiner that the drug pricing reforms are inferior to the Most Favored Nation policy.

“After much fanfare, Joe Biden’s Inflation ‘Reduction’ Act barely lowered drug prices in the first round of negotiations and actually increased Medicare premiums in the meantime,” said Desai. “President Trump is focused on delivering what American patients really want – lower drug prices by ending foreign free loading off of American innovation.”

One major IRA provision that faces an uncertain future is its extension of additional Obamacare premium subsidies. The additional subsidies prevented premiums from rising significantly for many middle-income people who get insurance through the exchanges. If they expire, many families would face higher costs, and the ranks of the uninsured would rise by 3.8 million, a daunting political scenario for Republicans. A permanent expansion, though, would cost the government $383 billion over the next 10 years. Many fiscal conservatives oppose that spending.

Tax hikes

Somewhat surprisingly — given that Republicans have control of the White House, the House, and the Senate — much of the tax hikes in the IRA have survived, although some have been altered or scaled back.

The OBBBA included a permanent extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts for individuals. It also enacted new campaign-trail Trump proposals, such as eliminating taxes on tips and ending taxes on overtime pay.

But the bill mostly kept the IRA tax hikes, with some changes, said Will McBride, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation.

The IRA created a corporate alternative minimum tax that mandated a 15% minimum tax for large corporations on their “book income” — that is, the income they report to investors, rather than what they report to the IRS. McBride said that the GOP bill only slightly tweaks that provision by providing a bit of a carveout for some companies in the oil and gas sector.

“It’s a very small issue — it’s less than a billion dollars over 10 years — so otherwise, the corporate alternative tax is fully in place,” McBride told the Washington Examiner.

The IRA also imposed a 1% excise tax on corporate stock repurchases. That was also untouched by the OBBBA. 

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Also, the Republican reconciliation legislation didn’t touch the $80 billion in new IRS funding that was granted by Democrats as part of the IRA. Still, other pieces of legislation have chiseled away at that $80 billion, and the funding is now about half of what it was when the IRA became law.