Speed permitting for fossil fuel projects.

Energy and Commerce Committee approves rollbacks for Biden energy programs

The GOP megabill would claw back unspent funds from Democrats’ climate law and speed permitting for fossil fuel projects.

James Bikales

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday night approved key portions of the GOP megabill central to President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda, clawing back billions of dollars in unspent funds from the Democrats’ 2022 climate law and speeding up permitting for fossil fuel projects.

The energy and environment subtitles of the panel’s draft bill represent just a small fraction of the spending cuts Energy and Commerce expects to achieve through its contribution to the Republican party-line package, most of which will come from highly controversial changes to Medicaid.

But Democrats still fiercely pushed back on the Republican energy provisions they said would raise energy prices by repealing popular Inflation Reduction Act programs and allow highly polluting industries to skip portions of the federal permitting process.

“We’re considering a reconciliation bill that picks winners and losers, and elevates expensive, outdated and inefficient sources like coal over cheap, American-made energy like solar, wind and storage,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.).

Committee Republicans defeated three amendments to the energy subtitle proposed by Democrats that would have ordered a study on the bill’s impact on energy costs, required the Energy Department’s inspector general to certify the permitting provisions would not increase corruption and forced the Energy secretary to certify tariffs on energy imports were lower than they were before the Trump administration took office.

Democrats particularly objected to portions of the bill that would allow fossil fuel developers to pay a fee to have their projects deemed in the public interest, which they termed a “pay-to-play” scheme.

“I do believe that it’s important that we discuss permitting reform, but to allow all of this to be bypassed completely is profoundly dangerous,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) predicted fossil fuel companies would not take advantage of the program. “You know this is headed to the courts, you know there’s a huge litigation risk here,” she said.

Republicans pushed back, saying that projects would still need to undergo full permitting processes through other agencies and compared the proposal to the user fees pharmaceutical companies pay to the Food and Drug Administration to review their products.

The debate on the environment subtitle, meanwhile, largely focused on the rescissions of unobligated IRA funds from a range of grant and loan programs at the Energy Department and Environmental Protection Agency.

That includes programs, such as EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, from which the Trump administration has attempted to freeze or rescind already obligated funds. Courts have so far ruled many of those efforts unlawful.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), who chairs the Environment subcommittee, insisted that the bill would only affect unobligated funds and was distinct from any actions that “may or may not be going on in the administration.” But Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.) said it was “disingenuous” for Republicans to argue that awarded funds would not be impacted by their actions.

“Would you be willing to say that to the Trump administration, who is cutting money that this Congress has appropriated all over the country?” Carter said.

Republicans have not released information on how much money they expect to claw back from each of the programs, though full committee chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) initially pegged the total rescissions from the IRA at $6.5 billion. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said the unobligated funds from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund amounted to just $19 million for “basic administrative functions.”

The GOP bill would also delay implementation of the IRA’s methane fee for oil and gas companies by 10 years and repeal two Biden administration rules aimed at speeding adoption of electric vehicles.