Kaptur in September. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Rep. Marcy Kaptur is gearing up for a fight with the incoming Trump administration and Republicans who seek to dramatically cut government programs.
Why it matters: Kaptur, the top House Democratic energy and water appropriator, is the first line of defense for nearly $60 billion in annual funding to the Energy Department and other agencies.
- Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, co-leads on the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are already sharing with GOP lawmakers their vision of spending cuts. Musk backs ending tax credits for EV sales.
What she's saying: "I'm very concerned about extremely wealthy people who have business in mind violating the rules and trying to exert pressure on the executive agencies and departments because of their own financial interests," Kaptur told Axios in her office.
- Of Musk, she said: "I don't see that his interest is the public interest. Seems to me he has a lot of private interests, and we need to know what they are."
The big picture: Kaptur, the longest-serving congresswoman in history, has been a fierce opponent of Republicans' DOE cuts.
- She slammed a Republican-approved energy/water bill in July that would have cut by 43% the agency's energy efficiency and renewable energy programs and reprogrammed $8 billion from the Loan Programs Office to fund nuclear projects.
Zoom in: The next session will likely bring even tougher battles.
- Kaptur plans to frame the panel as funding essential infrastructure amid the need for more energy, staving off drought, and competition for resources.
- She criticized the House GOP leadership as "very unstable" and behind on passing funding packages as well as the farm bill.
- But she regularly speaks with Republicans who are concerned about keeping funding and whose thin House majority gives Democrats unusual influence.
Between the lines: Kaptur said she has common ground with Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, the panel's GOP chair, on funding research to repurpose nuclear waste and maintain the industry as a power source.
- "We talk about this a lot, and this country needs a solution," she said. "We have to find an answer for that, particularly because there's an agenda now to build more nuclear power plants."
The bottom line: "The newbies will come to discover the deliberative process," Kaptur said of Musk, Ramaswamy and their allies.
- "Nothing happens overnight in this country," she said. "We'll see what the new administration proposes, and we will meet it head on."
