The Ways and Means Committee oversees tax writing, meaning that it will be responsible for proposing which of Trump’s tax cuts to include in the upcoming budget reconciliation bill, how to pay for them, and which of the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits should stay or go. “That is where these decisions are being talked about behind closed doors,” Andrew Reagan, the executive director of Clean Energy for America, told me.
Although the Senate will also have a say, Reagan said that the signal in Washington right now is that whatever version of the bill the House passes is going to be pretty close to the final bill. “That’s why it’s so important for any Republican members who see the benefit of what’s happening in their communities and how their constituents are saving money on energy to be talking to their colleagues right now in Ways and Means.”
I talked to Reagan more about what the lobbying push this week will look like. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
First off, why is this push happening now? What’s going on this week?
Folks both in clean energy businesses and in trade associations have been meeting with Hill offices on an almost daily basis throughout this year to highlight the negative impacts that would happen if these priority energy tax credits are not preserved. What’s unique here is Congress is back in session, and we have the process moving in Ways and Means. And as Speaker Johnson and others have signaled, the House version is what they expect will be the final version of a reconciliation bill. So the time to preserve these energy tax credits is now.
Which tax credits are your priority? Is it a push for everything, or is it a push for specific policies?
We want to be a voice for both the clean energy workforce and companies in this industry. The unifying message is we need policy stability, and if we’re going to achieve the energy goals that the Trump administration has laid out, we can’t do that by repealing or curtailing many of the critical energy credits. There is a lot of importance on both 45X, clean manufacturing, and 48E and 45Y, the tech neutral [clean electricity production and investment] credits because that has such a broad effect across the entire industry, across the entire economy. They are going to be pivotal to continuing to lower energy costs and create jobs.
I don’t want to give short shrift to a lot of the others that are creating innovation. I’m not sure if you saw the Jesse Jenkins study recently, but things like 30D, the consumer EV credit — he projected that has a big impact on 45X. So I think it’s also important to educate folks that there is a real risk. Even if you keep a credit in place, if you take away too much of the underlying reinforcement in related credits, you can see these really negative effects where it might be the same as effectively killing or curtailing some of those credits.
Other than making the jobs argument and the consumer savings argument, what is your message for Republicans?
One of the really important but maybe underappreciated points is that if you take away many of these credits, you will see electricity prices across the board, both for consumers and for industry, rise. There’s a study that [the Clean Energy Buyers Association] put out that gave a state by state projection of how much energy costs would rise just by next year, just if the 48E and 45Y production and investment credits were taken out. In some cases, in some states, that’s an increase of anywhere from up to 6% or 10% on top of existing inflation. So I think when we’re talking to Republican offices and Democratic offices, the case that we’re making is, “You want to lower costs for consumers? The existing tax credits that are helping more energy be produced are pivotal to doing that.”
And then, to come back to the parts of President Trump’s energy agenda that I think we all can get behind, things like bringing back manufacturing to the United States — manufacturing uses an immense amount of energy, so rising electricity prices for commercial applications make it harder to manufacture. As well as the president’s promise to lower energy bills by half in 12 to 18 months — there’s no way to achieve that goal if you curtail or drastically cut the energy tax credit.
So I think it’s important to really link for offices, if you are a Republican who wants to see President Trump’s energy agenda succeed, all of those things are reliant upon the existing energy credits. This is not a choice of, do they need to go against the president? This is something where they can still help their consumers, advance the parts of the president’s agenda that are related to energy, and they don’t have to make that choice.
Are you pushing for blanket protection for some of these tax credits? Or are you talking through potential compromises that legislators can make while still preserving the biggest benefits?
Clean Energy for America and the companies we work with, we’ve really just focused on education and the broader picture. I’ve been astounded by how many offices didn’t even know about some of the big projects in their district that were benefiting from tax credits. So I think there’s a lot more education needed about some of the very basics at this point. There are others with much more policy expertise equipped to get into some of those conversations. But again, at Clean Energy for America, our focus has been, here are all the benefits being created in your district, in your state, and backing that up with the data and the real voices of both companies and workers.
What does the fight to save the IRA on the Hill look like? Who are the main players to convince?
The first thing I would say is, the framing of “saving the IRA” — that’s not how we, or I think anyone else, thinks about it. A lot of the credits that we’re talking about predated the IRA, and so we really try to move the conversation on to, here are the pieces of these tax credits that both existed before and are currently benefiting your district. Mike Fitzpatrick on Ways and Means, he was instrumental in 2020 on some of the [investment tax credit] provisions.
We published a story this morning about the tough budget math that’s going to make it a lot harder to preserve the IRA. How is that playing into this lobbying push?
One thing I would say is, without getting too far in the weeds, I think the debate around “current policy baseline,” for how the tax package is paid for, is going to be probably the single most important thing. Even if you repealed all of the things we’re talking about, there’s no way to advance what the president wants in a tax package out of the House without a current policy baseline framework. So I think that is probably, even more so than the math of the current credits, going to be the pivotal piece of this larger policy.
Does that mean that you support a current policy baseline?
We have not advocated specifically, publicly on that issue. I’m just speaking from a process standpoint, that I would be very surprised if there’s a way that Republicans can get something out of the House if they don’t implement that current policy baseline.
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