The two men picked to lead Republicans in Congress are talking a big game when it comes to their plans for the next few years, but they’ll have their work cut out for them.
On Wednesday, John Thune (R-S.D.) won the race for Senate majority leader, and Mike Johnson (R-La.) took an important step to reprise his role as House speaker. But big questions remain for both of them on legislative priorities with Republicans now in full control of Washington.
Chief among them is a budget reconciliation bill to extend the 2017 tax cuts while potentially gutting huge portions of the Democrats’ 2022 climate law to pay for it. Some Republicans are already lobbying their leaders to salvage portions of the Inflation Reduction Act, even though none of them voted for it. Others say the rush to repeal should be reconsidered.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she just came back from a trip to Iceland, where foreign investors gave parts of the IRA high marks.
“Before we throw everything out, maybe we should take a look at what we’re talking about,” she said.
What Thune chooses to do on that front is an open question. In remarks to the press after besting Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) for the job to succeed Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Thune promised to, among other things, “work to restore American energy dominance — not just our energy security, but energy dominance, which will lower costs and bolster our national security.”
But Thune has not yet taken a public position on the fate of the clean energy tax credits contained in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The law was a punching bag on the campaign trail for President-elect Donald Trump, and many conservatives are eager to scrap it completely. Yet many of the incentives are benefiting red districts and states, including Thune’s.
“Republican senators know firsthand the importance of clean energy investments, including their new Senate Majority Leader John Thune,” said Lori Lodes, executive director of the pro-IRA group Climate Power, in a statement. “Thune’s own state of South Dakota is mostly powered by cleaner, cheaper wind energy.”
Thune comes from an agriculture-heavy state where the wind energy industry is rapidly growing. He has fought for conservation priorities during his time in the Senate, including in previous farm bill reauthorizations.
Still, South Dakota is the only state thus far to have opted out of an IRA program that will give rebates to consumers who make their homes more energy efficient.
And Thune devoted time in August to a lengthy floor speech that marked the IRA’s two-year anniversary by slamming it as a “slush fund” and “Green New Deal activism” funded by taxpayer dollars, criticizing electric vehicle “mandates” and the dollars directed to planting more trees.
It could be through this lens that Thune will oversee crafting of a reconciliation bill, the crown jewel for parties that control the government but not with filibuster-proof majorities. Under budget reconciliation, only a simple majority is required in the Senate for passage.
Working with Trump
Republican senators predicted the new majority leader, as a longtime member of the Finance Committee, would take a hands-on role in putting the legislation together.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) recalled the negotiations around last GOP-led reconciliation package in 2017. Then, as a member of the House, Cramer received a call from Thune “in the middle of the night” with instructions to go to then-House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office to tell the Wisconsin Republican that he would vote “no” if certain language involving rural cooperatives were not included in the final bill.
“He knows what has to happen. He knows how to do it,” said Cramer of Thune. “He wants to proceed with the same, if not greater, urgency.”
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who on Wednesday won the job of Senate majority whip in the next Congress, noted that he and Thune, as current members of the Finance Committee, were both plugged into ongoing discussions about the shape of a possible reconciliation package.
Repealing some of the IRA tax credits to pay for the Republican bill, Barrasso said, “is an area where there has been some focus and some attention, and so we’re going to continue that discussion and we’ll work with President Trump and their incoming administration on all the ways to address it.”
Thune and Barrasso, the outgoing ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, will be leading a Senate GOP leadership team that will include Republican Policy Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who is also on tap to be the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee next year.
Others elected to positions in leadership on Wednesday are Republican Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Republican Conference Vice Chair James Lankford (R-Okla.) and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.).
A spokesperson for Thune did not provide a comment about the incoming majority leader’s position on the IRA, but the leader will probably have to take a position on the tax credits soon.
Several Senate Republicans told POLITICO’s E&E News this week that the IRA indeed had clean energy incentives that are worth preserving and protecting.
In addition to Murkowski’s comments, Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) mentioned the carbon capture technology tax credit, which is being utilized by his state’s coal-fired power plants.
The talk in the Senate could mirror a dynamic that is already playing out in the House, where a group of moderate Republicans have been lobbying House Speaker Johnson to commit to keeping some of the IRA tax credits intact in any reconciliation bill.
The pressure campaign resulted in Johnson saying in September that he would prefer to take “a scalpel and not a sledgehammer” to the credits.
Sen. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) — one of 18 House Republicans who signed a letter back in August urging Johnson to leave the credits alone, who has one of the biggest electric vehicle manufacturing plants in his district — said Wednesday the speaker was also “receptive” to their plea in a recent meeting.
Another of the co-signers of the August letter to Johnson, Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.), was elected secretary of the House GOP Conference, giving this issue additional salience at the leadership table next year. Houchin defeated Conservative Climate Caucus Chair Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa.
Looking to H.R. 1
House Republicans on Wednesday nominated Johnson to retain the Speaker’s gavel in the next Congress. Unlike the other elected leadership positions, he’ll have to stand before his members on the chamber floor for a live roll call vote in January to seal the deal, but he currently has no challenger.
At a press conference following the leadership elections, Johnson offered no specifics on the House GOP agenda beyond emphasizing that the party has “a very well-designed playbook” that members are ready to “execute … with precision on Day 1.”
But earlier in the day, House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) said people should look no further than H.R. 1, the “Lower Energy Costs Act,” for a sense of where House Republicans wanted to take a reconciliation bill. That bill, which passed the House last year, would ease environmental regulations to rapidly expand domestic energy production.
“We gotta figure out what we can get in the package,” Westerman said, “but you could go take a look at H.R. 1 and get a good idea.”
In addition, Republicans in both chambers are calling for a clawback of unspent IRA funding.
House Republicans also voted Wednesday to keep House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), House Republican Conference Vice Chair Blake Moore (R-Utah) and National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) in their current roles.
Newcomers to the leadership slate in addition to Houchin will include Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) and Policy Chair Kevin Hern (R-Okla.).
Reporters Kelsey Brugger, Garrett Downs, Nico Portuondo, Timothy Cama and Andres Picon contributed.
