Illustration: Shoshana Gordon / Axios
House Republicans are getting ready for a massively difficult vote to pass their reconciliation bill that includes rollbacks to energy tax credits amid discomfort from both deficit hardliners and IRA-friendly moderates.
Why it matters: The upcoming vote will show whether a fragile deal on phasing out credits for wind and solar will be enough of a compromise to carry President Trump's domestic agenda.
- A successful vote also could threaten bipartisanship on future priorities like overhauling permitting.
State of play: House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie told Axios on Wednesday morning that various GOP factions were still meeting on the tax credits and other issues.
- Freedom Caucus member Chip Roy — who called the Senate's softening of IRA cuts to wind and solar a "deal-killer" — told reporters Wednesday morning that he had enough votes to sink the bill "right now."
- The caucus released a letter railing against the Senate's move to allow wind and solar projects to claim tax credits if they start construction in the next year.
Reality check: Republicans have talked tough before — only to fall in line after Trump's lobbying.
- Many of the bill's backers projected calm: "I think everybody just has to look at it as a process," Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman told Axios.
- "Nobody's going to get everything they want in the bill, but it takes the House and the Senate combined — the majority in both — to get it on President Trump's desk," Westerman said.
- Ryan Zinke, who successfully got public-land sales scrapped from reconciliation, told Axios he sees enough unity in the conference around ending green energy subsidies to pass the bill as written.
The other side: House Democrats sought to drive a wedge between Republicans.
- "Just four need to show John McCain–level courage," Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a news conference, referring to the late GOP senator's 2017 torpedoing of Obamacare repeal.
The big picture: Any changes in phasing out energy credits would have to go back to the Senate, which just spent several days hashing out a deal that barely passed.
- "There are a lot of members who are not happy with [IRA cuts], and they're not the loud ones," said a lobbyist close to IRA-friendly Republicans who spoke on condition of anonymity.
- Those moderates, however, haven't shown an inclination to do more than write letters.
What's next: Westerman said he's among those open to doing another reconciliation bill, as Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested.
- "There's a lot of things that weren't even put on the table because they weren't fully developed that we'll see in a future reconciliation," Westerman said.
No matter what happens, the tortuous reconciliation process threatens bipartisan dealmaking on a permitting overhaul that both parties have teased as a priority toward year's end.
- "The appeal of permitting reform to a lot of Democrats is undermined if clean energy is sabotaged by this bill," Scott Peters told Axios.
- Although he intends to build support to make all types of projects go faster, "when we try and get votes at the end of the day from Democrats, I think a lot of them are going to be wondering what the urgency is if clean energy is off the table," he added.
- Paul Tonko, another Democrat who backs permitting changes, told Axios: "This causes a lot of divide. We're really putting ourselves back."
Our thought bubble: In a party that Trump controls, it comes down to whether the president just wants his bill to pass — or whether he wants to crush wind and solar even further. We'll bet on the former.
