Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios
Republicans are having a near-constant debate about their reconciliation plans. Here's what we're hearing …
🛢️ Drilling furor: An expansion of oil and gas leasing seems like one of the few sure things for Republicans in a reconciliation bill.
- Alaskans argue that the recent zero-bid sale in ANWR was a result of Biden policy and not a general unwillingness to drill.
- "They did it on purpose," Sen. Dan Sullivan told reporters. "Who the hell in the right mind would bid? So look, we're going to attack this again in budget reconciliation."
- House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman, meanwhile, said oil and gas development in the Western Gulf of Mexico "gives us a tremendous amount of opportunity to go above the current baseline" to generate revenue for the bill.
💰 On the menu: Pretty much everything else in the energy policy space is up in the air.
- Republicans will claw back as much of the IRA as they can, but they don't yet have an idea of which tax credits will be on the table.
- To wit, a recent menu of spending cuts circulated by the Budget Committee (and obtained by Axios' Peter Sullivan and Victoria Knight) lists potential offsets from repealing energy tax credits at "$200 - $500B, depending on political viability."
⏰ Timeline strategy: House Republicans leaders want to have a budget resolution done by late February, a floor vote on the resulting reconciliation bill by mid-April and a final product on Trump's desk by Memorial Day.
- That's probably unrealistic, given the sticky politics here, but it's worth noting that President Biden signed his first reconciliation package into law in March 2021.
- "We're gonna make it work," Westerman told Axios with a smile.
- He also said he's already got text in hand for some of his reconciliation proposals from the Natural Resources Committee.
