A group of moderate House Republicans — all of whom voted for the “one, big beautiful bill” last month — are desperately hoping the Senate adds several energy tax credits back into the reconciliation bill.
Their pleas to the Senate come as moderate Republicans’ other victories in the reconciliation negotiations are now in jeopardy as the upper chamber deliberates.
In the letter to Senate leadership obtained by NOTUS, 13 moderate Republicans led by Rep. Jen Kiggans called on the Senate to change the bill in order to protect the clean energy tax credits created under the Biden administration.
While the letter said they were all “proud” to have made sure all of the credits weren’t repealed, stripping the Biden-era funding “jeopardizes ongoing development, discourages long-term investment, and could significantly delay or cancel energy infrastructure projects across the country.”
“Without a clear signal from Congress encouraging continued investments and offering business certainty as these provisions are phased out, project cancellations will continue to snowball,” they wrote to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo.
The phaseout of the credits was added to the bill at the insistence of hard-line conservatives. If the Senate added them back in, that wing of the House conference would surely rebel. Peel off too many votes in either direction and the bill won’t pass the House.
Leadership has tried to assure moderates (and their Freedom Caucus counterparts) that they’re making it clear to the Senate that any major changes to the bill could doom it, a source told NOTUS.
But if that bill gets dramatically changed in the other chamber, moderates feel like they’ll be stuck holding the bag. Some say they could end up voting against the final product but they’ll be pilloried by Democrats for supporting the initial House bill no matter what.
They have set some red lines. For the handful of blue-state Republicans in the House, that line is raising the state and local deduction cap from $10,000 to $40,000.
But Thune has floated lowering the SALT cap, saying, “There really isn’t a single Republican senator who cares much about the SALT issue.”
“The hard-fought, negotiated, compromise 40k number, if disrupted, puts the entire bill in jeopardy,” Rep. Nick LaLota of New York told NOTUS.
Several senators have drawn similar red lines around Medicaid cuts. With Sen. Rand Paul expected to vote no on the bill, Thune can only afford to lose two others in his conference.
That puts moderate House Republicans in an uncomfortable position once again. As long as SALT and Medicaid provisions aren’t impacted in the Senate, several members told NOTUS they’re happy with the product that’s been negotiated but are worried about what could be coming down the road.
“We are concerned with everything because it’s all possible,” one House moderate told NOTUS.
But Rep. Nick Langworthy, another New York Republican, said he was fine letting the process play out as long as it was done quickly.
“Everyone’s gonna say their piece along the way, just like they did here, and people had red lines that mysteriously disappeared,” Langworthy told NOTUS.
“There’s still people over there that are dreaming for two-bill solutions,” he said. “We need to get this done by July 15.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS.