Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Congressional Republicans’ Plan To Use Their “Big, Beautiful Bill” To Kill Clean Energy Investments
Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor to call out Congressional Republicans for utilizing their so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” to repeal key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, killing billions in clean energy investments and forcing Americans to pay higher energy costs. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Now, let me talk about the broader issue, the Republican bill that just came out of committee on the House side.
What’s happening with Equinor is frankly part of a larger pattern of clean energy destruction – clean energy destruction – from Donald Trump and Republicans.
Before our very eyes, Republicans want to kill American clean energy in its tracks.
They want to use their so called one “Big, Beautiful Bill” to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act.
Most of all, they want to cut taxes for the ultra-rich and big corporations, and make Americans pay for it with higher energy costs, by rendering unusable the wind and solar tax breaks that were put into the legislation in the IRA.
And what does the American people need to know? Republicans are raising taxes on American’s electricity. That's raising costs on Americans' electricity as well.
Do you hear that, America? This ideological craziness that we shouldn't have wind and solar?
If we need to meet America's energy needs, we need clean energy. It’s the only way to go – even if you're for natural gas and oil to be used, even though those are far less efficient and productive than solar and wind energy.
But to do this – to meet the ideological thirst to shut clean energy down – Republicans are going to raise your energy bills, Mr. And Mrs. America, by as much as 10% by next year.
States like Kansas, Missouri, and South Carolina could see prices rise by 15%.
And Wyoming could see a nearly 30% increase in energy costs.
That’s hundreds of dollars a year extra for families and businesses. For a family or small business already dealing with inflation and a trade war, an extra 10% in costs could mean the difference between staying open and shutting down.
If Republicans repeal the IRA, a generation of American manufacturing jobs will also be in immediate risk – most of them in red states, although they’ll be in red states and blue states alike.
The IRA has already generated more than $270 billion in clean energy investment just last year. And that’s in addition to $100 billion in domestic manufacturing to build these projects right here at home.
All of this will be shut down if the House Republican bill passes the House and passes the Senate and is signed into law.
Here’s something Republicans should think about: nine of the top ten Congressional districts receiving manufacturing investment from the IRA are Republican districts. Those investments are over $5 billion each.
For a party that claims to be pro-business, what they're doing with Equinor is so anti-business and so disruptive of business decision making. And what they're doing here is just the same.
The restrictions they put in the bill are such that if a project, as I understand it, is not completed by 2028, it loses all of its credits. That means project after project after project, clean energy projects for wind and solar and others, will be shut down.
So, I have a message to the House Republicans in the Ways and Means Committee who just passed this bill on a strict party line vote.
To approve these cuts is to approve a death sentence for energy and manufacturing jobs for your communities.
These investments include the $700 million battery manufacturing plant in Fort Worth, Texas; the more than $5 billion in battery manufacturing at new and existing facilities in Fayette County, Ohio; or multiple solar manufacturing facilities in the Phoenix Metro Area of Arizona.
And mark my words: if Republicans gut the IRA, it would be a gift to the Chinese Communist Party. Jobs that should belong in America will go to cities like Chengdu, China, because China is not cutting back on clean energy, no way.
They're going to get way ahead of us on this industry, like they did on electric cars. And Americans will pay the price in high energy costs, in fewer jobs, and in losing the leadership on another industry to China.
But this one didn't have to happen. The IRA did a great job of getting America moving and ahead of China, and now they're taking it away.
So, putting it all together, this is what the Republican bill means for the middle class: higher electricity bills, hundreds of thousands of jobs erased across the country, and rising insurance premiums, particularly in states by the water.
Florida, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, their insurance premiums are going up now because we don't have enough clean energy and there's too much climate change with tornadoes and hurricanes and floods and Lord what else.
And so insurers, they don't want to insure anymore. They want to insure at such high prices that people can’t sell their homes in those states and across the country. And young people who want to buy a home can't buy because the insurance is too high and it's too high because we don’t have enough clean energy. And they’re cutting it off.
So, these are all terrible prices to pay just to lower taxes for the ultra-rich, just to satisfy the ideological thirst of oil and gas and coal barons who hate clean energy because they know it’s the future and they know they are not the future.
The broken Republican agenda is a political loser. Americans are losing, whether it's on Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or veterans benefits, or housing, and certainly on clean energy, which has broad support of the American people, Democrat and Republican alike.
And the warning signs, my Republican friends, are flashing. Last night, in Omaha Nebraska, a three-term Republican mayor was voted out of office. The Washington Post described how “disquiet over Trump’s agenda produced a surge of Democratic energy.” And so a three-term Republican mayor lost to a Democratic candidate.
People don’t like what Republicans are doing. It’s energizing people, not just Democrats, but people across the board to participate more and more in elections of all kinds. And here, in Congress, Republicans are pushing forward on an agenda that will make their political fortunes all the more ominous.
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