21 House Republicans now like Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act incentives.
Politico reports House Republican Support Grows for Keeping Clean Energy Tax Breaks
In a letter shared exclusively with POLITICO, 21 House Republicans — whose districts have drawn billions in new investments because of the Inflation Reduction Act incentives — said developing clean energy was critical for the U.S. to meet President Donald Trump’s goal of becoming “energy dominant.” And they threatened to resist their colleagues’ efforts to gut the law to help pay for a small fraction of the GOP’s multi-trillion-dollar tax-cut package.
“We have 20-plus members saying, ‘Don’t just think you can repeal these things and have our support,’” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), who organized the letter.
The growing pushback against eliminating the IRA’s hundreds of billions of dollars in tax credits and other incentives — which have largely benefited GOP-controlled districts — will complicate efforts by House Republicans to slash federal outlays without shrinking Medicaid spending as they seek to offset the tax cuts in their budget bill.
Up until now, Republicans haven’t detailed how far they are willing to go to protect these credits as Trump seeks to dismantle former President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, even as other members have loudly balked about cuts to Medicaid.
Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.), who signed the letter and has a large electric vehicle manufacturing plant in his district, said he discussed the credits with Speaker Mike Johnson before the House narrowly passed its budget framework late last month. Ciscomani is also among the Republicans raising concerns about proposed limits on Medicaid and food assistance.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers including Ways and Means member Carol Miller (R-W.Va.) introduced a bill last week to expand that credit, known as 45Q, to cover methane captured from mines.
Pack of Republican Now Support
- No Medicaid rollbacks
- More food assistance
- Expansion of Inflation Reduction Act provisions to capture methane
- Reinstatement of State and Local Tax deduction (primary benefit big blue states)
All the Republicans want more military spending. None of them want to discuss Social Security other than not taxing benefits which will dig a bigger SS hole.
Only one Representative stood against this nonsense. That would be hard-line deficit-hawk Thomas Massie.
Guess what happened to him. ZeroHedge has the details.
Massie Donations Pour In
Please consider Massie Donations Pour In – Jewish Group Vows To Help Trump Oust Him
President Trump’s social-media tirade against hard-line deficit-hawk Thomas Massie has had a big effect — but not exactly the one Trump wanted. Since Trump’s late-night tantrum in which he called for the Republican congressman to be ousted via a primary challenge, the Kentucky congressman has raked in more than $200,000 in donations. That huge and growing windfall comes as the Republican Jewish Coalition promised to help make Trump’s dream of a Congress without Massie come true.
Massie provoked Trump’s wrath on Sunday, when he vowed to vote against a continuing resolution (CR) that would fund the government through Sept 30 — but without spending cuts. “Why would I vote to continue the waste fraud and abuse DOGE has found?” wrote Massie on X. “We were told the CR in December would get us to March when we would fight. Here we are in March, punting again!”
On Monday evening, a sputtering Trump used his Truth Social account to lash out at the libertarian-minded Massie:
“HE SHOULD BE PRIMARIED, and I will lead the charge against him. He’s just another GRANDSTANDER, who’s too much trouble and not worth the fight. He reminds me of Liz Cheney before her historic, record breaking fall (loss!). The people of Kentucky won’t stand for it, just watch. DO I HAVE ANY TAKERS??”
Glenn Greenwald zeroed in on Trump’s bizarre likening of Massie to Liz Cheney:
Of the many absurd aspects of Trump’s attack on Thomas Massie, the comparison of Massie to Liz Cheney has to be the most laughable. It’s honestly difficult to think of two people less similar to one another than Thomas Massie and Liz Cheney.
And MAGA Republicans believe Republicans led by DOGE are going to cut the deficit. What a hoot!
Lutnick Says Tariffs Can Eliminate the IRS and Balance the Budget
Of all the lunatic ideas on how Republicans will balance the budgets at the top of the list is tariffs.
I did the math on that idea.
We would need to faithfully collect 200 percent tariffs on everything, with of no trade frictions, no retaliations, full compliance, and no reductions in imports.
It’s even stupider than the above sentence implies. For discussion, please see Lutnick Says Tariffs Can Eliminate the IRS and Balance the Budget
RINOs then?
Idiots of the day follow the money as natural born persons enjoying the legal fiction of corporate persons getting to enjoy 5 mil. Gold Cards purchasing legal migration while enjoying death penalty exemptions denied common law aborted non-persons in utero with beating hearts unable to exorcise my body my choice. Have a nice unnatural corporate pleasure principled day Mish. . .
where do you see a pack supports no medicaid Mish?THanks
No Cuts to Medicaid – I used the word “rollback”
Re-read my post
yes my mistake: is that public now that there is a group opposed to rollbacks?
So often the bulk and leadership of the Republican Party just seems like the junior marketing dept. for the ruling class. (Dems being the senior marketing dept.)
“Only one Representative stood against this nonsense.”
I noticed that a Democrat subbed for Massie’s no vote, to get the CR passed in the House.
This is why the government has to shrink drastically.
ITs a giant parasitic grift. YOu steal other people’s money and hide the crime behind ‘taxes’ and the government.
Its still theft.
Hoot Hoot – Don’t Pollute !
Give a Hoot! Don’t Pollute: Earth Day with Woodsy Owl – The Unwritten Record
There is nothing clean about a hailstorm smashing a solar panel ‘farm’ with heavy metals and “the forever chemical” coating or disposal of wind turbine blades. Or the solar turbines which roast birds to death.
Thomas Sowell, an economist, has said that “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs”. This means that we cannot achieve a perfect outcome, and that we must make choices between different options, each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages. We must try to get the best trade-off we can get.
Volatility scared investors. They parked their money in gov bills, MMF and CDs. That
saving – 1/3 of the GDP.- is doing nothing all day for the economy. If JP will cut rates he will ease gov debt payment and unleash a money tsunami in the economy.
IN other words, inflation and speculation
That’s the PROBLEM. Not a solution.
Lower rates ==> faster debt payments. Inflation reduces REAL gov debt. Highly skilled and skilled workers will fill gov coffer along with tariffs. Investors trust a gov that can lower its debt. They will park their money in the real economy. They will be rewarded. A good econ lift all wages. The poor will get gov support
Trump tightened his grip on the Ayatollah. Trump’s tariffs target Xi. Both rule
with an iron fist. If the Iranian and Chinese econ cont to deflate revolution forces in China and Iran might break their iron fist. PRC creed: 1) rule with an iron fist, 2) takeover Taiwan. If Trump rips the creed ==> Taiwan will stay free.
Trump will build more factories, more refineries and more smelters. He will sack gov workers, but the US Steel union and UAW salivate.
Learn to forge?
AI never learnt about radiologists in aluminum plants making half a million a year.
These lemmings like what king donald tells them to like. No independent thinking.
The only way this country is going to change is if the bond market demands higher interest rates from the Federal government and our currency collapses. They’re not going to voluntarily cut spending.
Sadly that appears accurate. We’re coke addicts looking for our next hit, and we elect pushers to run the 12 step program.
It isn’t exactly what I think of as a market when the Fed can print up “savings” at will and buy the debt. And lean on foreign central banks to do the same. And its member banks to amplify these ex nihilo “reserves” to purchase yet more of the debt.
The Fed is the enabler. The sine qua non of $37,000,000,000,000 in explicit Federal debt.
Hoot of the day is watching Chuck Schumer lose his mind.
FAFO Chucky.
This is why we should move the nation’s capitol to Barrow Alaska – so that serving in congress would be barely tolerable versus being feted in a cushy environment. These congress critters are addicted to their privileges and obsequious treatment, so they never have the balls to do what’s right. Hate to impose them on the caribou herds, but we can’t go on like this. https://gml.noaa.gov/obop/brw/livecamera.html
What in Gods name have the good people of Barrow done to you to deserve that being inflicted on them.
I know, but sacrifices must be made. Thankfully the population there is about 5,000.
Try again: https://www.dougthorburn.com/cmsAdmin/uploads/72thorburnfall23.pdf
Wasn’t it Elizabeth Taylor on her treatise on the interdynamics of political power and economics, “Towards Entropy” – that stated “politics makes strange bedfellows, and lumpy pillows”?
We cling to a ball of clay and water, spinning around a ball of fire and we try to make sense of minute changes in in the currents of human feeling, thought and madness, as if fishing a moment of lucidity from a stream of madness.
Our senses occlude our understanding, our biases block our wisdom, our days are spent in seeking moments of clarity in a world of darkness.
Words lose meaning, redefined on the fly. Clean energy? Even the sun, the paradigm of clean energy, blows out tremendous amounts of proton flux, and strong magnetic fields, occasionally strong enough to set telegraph lines on fire and blackout the power grid.
Clean energy is like Jumbo Shrimp, an oxymoron. It is a catch phrase meant to induce a current in the listeners brain and bring forth positive endorphins. It is a drug, it is not engineering or a tangible system of a means of production.
That big ball of fire is clean energy, and it’s the source of all other energy on this ball of clay.
Trump wants the US to be self-sufficient in energy overall and electricity is a big part of that energy. He also wants the US to be self-sufficient in aluminum, which requires a huge amount of low cost electricity to produce.
The US has just 4 aluminum smelters still operating (down from as many as 20). The smelters that closed were uncompetitive because of high costs for electricity.
Century Aluminum plans to build the first new aluminum smelter in the US in 47 years. Most likely in Kentucky, and it will be run with green electricity. This project requires a lot of government support and funding, which Biden was providing. If completed (in about 10 years) it will double US aluminum production.
There are no other aluminum smelters being planned and we will need another 3 like this one to become self-sufficient in aluminum.
Or, we can just keep buying cheap aluminum from Canada, our former best friend and ally.
Then trump should acquire Iceland, geo-thermo electricity is practically free there.
Century has a smelter in Iceland, which is their biggest. Alcoa might build a smelter in Greenland.
Yes. “Might” is the correct word. Alcoa has been in discussions with Greenland on this project since 2010. Fifteen years, and still no decision on if this will happen or at which location.
or the cia can foment a colour revolution north of our border, and el norte can be ours without a single bullet being fired.
Viva La Revolution, Free Canada for Canadians, everyone should be displaying Canadian flags to show their support. C’mon we saw this in Egypt and Ukraine, we know how this is done.
Time for some mini-series about freedom fighters in Canada working against their tyranical government from a basement and a collective farm with beautiful young actors and actresses and a really cool sound track.
As it turned out, the Ukrainian Revolution (Maidan) was not free for the US. Since 2014, have we spent $200 billion or $300 billion(?) on Ukraine. And I am not counting related world wide inflation effects caused by the war.
Time to send the F16’s in.
Not likely the Kentucky Century aluminum plant will be built.It would require billions in subsidies to build the plant and then continue with billions in subsidies for electricity for production.
And if built, it would still be one of the highest cost aluminum plants on the planet.
Century just closed an aluminum plant in Kentucky last year citing high energy costs.
It still has not been explained how and what will provide the electricity for the new plant?
The first new US aluminum plant in decades plans big… | Canary Media
“Beyond building the infrastructure needed to produce aluminum lies the question of how to produce the clean electricity needed to power it. According to the DOE, Century Aluminum’s preferred site is in Kentucky, a state with lackluster clean energy credentials. In 2020, the Bluegrass State had a paltry 30.1 megawatts of solar generating capacity and no wind energy production whatsoever. Sartor says she expects a plant of this size to require “somewhere in the neighborhood of a gigawatt” of power. That’s enough to serve 800,000 U.S. homes for a year. “The only way that will happen is if gargantuan amounts of clean energy get built in Kentucky,” Sartor said. “There’s no other way around this.”
A representative for Century Aluminum told Grist the company is “excited to move this transformational project forward,” but declined to answer other questions or say how it plans to secure the carbon-free energy required. The DOE wouldn’t speak to the challenges that may arise procuring clean energy, citing ongoing award negotiations.
“Or, we can just keep buying cheap aluminum from Canada, our former best friend and ally.”
The reality, the US needs cheap Canadian aluminum.
Why the U.S. Can’t Afford to Lose Canada’s Critical Mineral Aluminum – InvestorNews
U.S. Aluminum Production: Running on Empty
“The numbers tell a stark story. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in 2024, the U.S. had a primary aluminum production capacity of just 1.36 million tonnes. However, it was operating at only 50% of this capacity, resulting in the production of around 680,000 tonnes of aluminum. Meanwhile, the U.S. imported over 4.8 million tonnes of crude and semi-manufactured aluminum products, with Canada supplying 2.6 million tonnes of that total. This massive gap between U.S. production and demand underscores the fact that the U.S. aluminum sector cannot meet its needs without relying on foreign sources.
The root cause of this imbalance lies in the high cost of production. One of the most significant costs for aluminum smelters is electricity, which often accounts for up to half of the total production costs. In the U.S., industrial electricity prices are notably higher than in Canada, where the vast majority of aluminum smelters are located in Quebec, a province known for its abundant and low-cost hydroelectric power. In contrast, U.S. smelters face energy costs that are up to three times higher than their Canadian counterparts, making it nearly impossible for American producers to compete with Canadian aluminum on cost.”
“The reality, the US needs cheap Canadian aluminum.”
Correct. I have said the same thing many times recently. The same goes for oil, potash, uranium etc
Don’t extend the ridiculous tax cuts from 2017 and you’ll go a long ways to paying for those things. They should also eliminate the many, many loopholes that serve only to benefit real estate and drilling investors in ways not available to other businesses.
Think back to the 1990s under Clinton (and forget Monica). We actually had a year with a budget surplus, a virbrant economy and tax rates on all levels that were above where we are today.
The Clinton years, the start of my personal lost decade as Clinton, Gore, and Babbitt waged war on the logging and mining industries as part of their Green deindustrialization policy.
We were all supposed to get rich doing each others web pages. Didn’t work.
It worked for some people and not others.
You are worried that the corrupt grift that is the Federal govt. isn’t collecting enough money!?! If you want freedom and prosperity, shrink the govt back to the size it was in the 1990s.
These heartless rubes will bend over like all the other GOP when Trump says it’s time to be told how to vote and what to do.
It’s pathetic. They’re just like any loyal party nabob. No principles, just hobbies and some nice words to tell themselves at happy hour.
I fixed it for you Mish. Zerohedge had an article about how red states are the biggest welfare queens when it comes to Federal government spending. The comments were as expected, livid of being called out for what they are…. I look forward to Trump cutting these leeches off at the knees.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter though, everyone will become a socialist sooner or later so expect the smart money to move to greener pastures.
In 2020 the dems were mad at Trump who tries to steal poor shingle mums votes.
Their amygdala hijacked them. Poor blacks and latinos will vote for Vance. He is the inverse of a typical rep. He isn’t charming. He will ride on Trump’s back. Trump took care of the poor and the middleclass during covid. Inelastic rich dems will cont to be loyal to the uniparty, Their power is dwindling.
You’re totally insane, do you even know what’s going on in America?
Watch the video of this deep red town hall in a deep red state.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qd_rO-OmQg
The GOP put out a memo not to do that. Gotta give that guy credit for having the courage to face his constituents when the rest don’t.
What??? How did Trump take care of the middle class and poor during C19??? He wasn’t as bad as celery stick with lockdowns, but Trump was awful on C19.
I have a huge family on both sides, and without exception the trailer trash/drunk/meth head failures are trump followers.
Kid Rock is a perfect representation of what they are.
Trump fixed Biden’s sinkhole, while benefitting from his investments in industrial
plants that will provide high skilled jobs and protect us from other abusive countries.
He’s in the process of creating the greatest deficit in human history, destroying our alliances, crashing the stock market, and making Americans international pariahs.
By ‘fixed’ you must mean ‘gelded’.
What happens to companies that started intensive capital improvement projects in various stages of construction based on these incentives? In one case I know the IRA contributed 1/3 the cost of a $1.5B project. Trump wants manufacturing plants that take 4 years to build in the US to avoid tariffs. What happens if the next president eliminates the tariffs? These grants need to be looked at in a case by case basis.
in 2020, after raiding bank accounts for an IOU, Trump transferred $5K/$10K from the rich to poor shingle mums with children. He likes the new aluminum smelter that provide five thousands construction jobs and one thousands permanent USSteel union workers, financed by Biden’s Dep of Energy. Wages can range from $60 to $500K for a radiologist. China is by far the biggest producer of aluminum and steel in the world. If China impose aluminum and steel embargo on us our air force will not fly.
We’d be at risk of peace breaking out.
I foresee a mineshaft gap. Recommend everyone watch Dr.Strangelove to understand power and politics.
Planes run on Kerosene, not aluminum. – Fact check
Modern Republicans are mostly just 1980s tax and spend Democrats, but with spending for their districts.
Only DOGE actually wants.to balance the budget.
DOGE has no idea what they are doing.
I’m not that confident Trump does either.
Wants to, but has no idea they won’t be able to. Drop in the bucket so far.
What DOGE wants and what the courts let stand are two different things. DOGE cuts will end up being a rounding error unless the claims of massive Social Security fraud bear out.
Medicare and Medicaid are where the big money is. Along with ACA subsidies, veterans healthcare, and some children’s health program I’d never heard of until I was looking for health care spending in the budget.
True. The conspiratorial opacity in medical billing makes it impossible to know what anything costs. If the government required the cost to be the cost no matter how it is paid (cash, private insurance, the government) it would be a necessary first step toward squeezing out the grift. Denninger wrote that payments to hospitals are up by 20% and payment to doctors are up 31% over last year. https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=252960 That may be a statistical anomaly, but the medical industry in the US sucks more out of the economy than in any other country.
DOGE wants to cripple the agencies investigating Elon’s crimes. Nothing more.
Trump’s moves, with all their inconsistencies, have had the “shock and awe” advantage. The common response has been fretting and lots of the deer-in-the-headlights phenomenon. As the numbers are toted up, pockets of resistance will coalesce. GOP elites have things like relatives who are postal workers or grad students.
… or landlords near colleges.
Trump went on an unhinged tirade against the only fiscal adult in the house. That tells you how serious the new republican establishment is about getting the budget under control. We’ll (maybe) get a few high profile cuts to things at USAID, but the debt will continue to explode higher.
Trump is decorating the rails on the Titanic’s main deck.
Meet the new boss. Just like the old boss.
its ‘same as the old boss’
Things the left discussed before the election, now it’s like the right came up with it as an original idea. Ha.