President Donald Trump is demanding the Senate terminate green energy tax credits enacted under former President Joe Biden, throwing a potential wrinkle in Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s plans to make significant headway on passing the “one big, beautiful” bill next week.
The president sent a Truth Social post Saturday afternoon slamming intermittent renewable energy and excoriating the Senate’s proposal for failing to completely slash the Biden-era green energy tax credits. Trump’s demand that the Senate immediately end all “green tax credits” is likely to boost conservative Republicans pushing for a complete termination of the green energy tax breaks and give heartburn to moderates who have said the proposed reforms are too stringent.
This marks the latest hurdle for Senate Republicans as Thune has floated holding a “vote-a-rama” to pass the president’s landmark bill as early as Wednesday. GOP senators are still negotiating changes to contentious provisions, such as reforms to Medicaid, in their draft proposal. The Senate parliamentarian, an appointee of the late Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid, is also beginning to strike key deficit-reducing provisions from their tax and spending bill, which could also pose problems as fiscal hawks demand greater reductions to deficit spending.
“I HATE ‘GREEN TAX CREDITS’ IN THE GREAT, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,” the president wrote in all capital letters. “They are largely a giant SCAM. I would much prefer that this money be used somewhere else, including reductions. ‘Anywhere’ would be preferable!”
“Windmills, and the rest of this ‘JUNK,’ are the most expensive and inefficient energy in the world, is destroying the beauty of the environment, and is 10 times more costly than any other energy,” Trump added. “None of it works without massive government subsidy (energy should NOT NEED SUBSIDY!). Also, it is almost exclusively made in China!!! It is time to break away, finally, from this craziness!!!”
Trump frequently called for the complete repeal of the ‘Green New Scam,’ his nickname for certain provisions of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), on the campaign trail. No Republican lawmakers voted for the legislation when Biden signed it into law in August 2022.
The president had stayed largely silent on the fate of the tax credits since beginning his second term as congressional Republicans debated how aggressively to roll back the Biden-era green energy subsidies.
Trump’s decision to weigh into the debate could apply enough pressure on senators to rewrite the bill to pursue an immediate phase out of the green energy tax credits.
“It is time to break away, finally, from this craziness!!!,” Trump said at the end of his Truth Social post.
Though the Senate’s proposal would almost immediately end tax credits for electric vehicles, rooftop solar panels and hydrogen fuels, the upper chamber rolled back House-passed language that moderate GOP senators argued went too far.
The Senate draft notably slowed phase out timelines for wind and solar tax credits by nixing a requirement that would force wind and solar projects to begin construction this year to qualify for the full credit amount. The draft bill also places fewer restrictions on companies using materials from China and allows project developers to transfer their tax credits to third parties, a tax maneuver that allows entities to better finance their project costs.
Energy advocate Alex Epstein, who has advocated for terminating the tax credits by the end of Trump’s term, met with Senate Republicans Wednesday to discuss the upper chamber’s proposed reforms.
Though Epstein said certain GOP senators pushed back at the idea of being subsidy-free by 2028, he said he was “cautiously optimistic” the Senate would move up termination deadlines for solar and wind subsidies.
“Under the current Senate Finance proposal, there will still be wind subsidies in 2041 on Donald Trump’s 95th birthday,” Epstein told reporters. “I think if he knew that he would not have considered this terminating the ‘Green New Scam.’”
Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, who warned the Senate that they would not accept “IRA Green New Scam rollbacks” in the upper chamber’s proposal, cheered Trump’s Truth post calling for a wholesale repeal of the green energy tax breaks.
“The President gets it,” Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy wrote Saturday on X. “Congress needs to ignore K street.”
Roy told reporters during a press call on June 17 that the Senate’s initial draft proposal that introduced slower phase outs of certain IRA tax credits was dead-on-arrival in the House.
The president’s sweeping tax and spending bill will have to pass the House for a second time following its passage in the Senate before Trump can sign it into law. He is demanding the bill on his desk by July 4.
Thune has voiced confidence that the Senate will do its part to quickly deliver the bill to the House for consideration despite looming challenges.
“As we head into this next week, I’m fully confident we’re going to be ready to roll,” Thune told Breitbart’s Matt Boyle on Saturday. “We have to be, we’ve got to deliver. And the one thing I’ve discovered in my time in Washington is if you don’t put deadlines out there, nothing gets done, and this stuff can drag on and on endlessly.”
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