This ClimateCast focuses on the federal reconciliation bill which the Senate is poised to vote on within days. It poses clear, massive threats to climate stability, clean energy progress, pristine public lands, and energy affordability, and people’s health. While senators in Oregon and Washington are united against this bill, our fellow western-state senator Lisa Murkowski (AK) is one of a few senators in the majority signaling that they may stand up to their party leadership and vote against the bill. 

Please help encourage her: call the US Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121, ask for Senator Murkowski’s office, and ask her to vote NO on the reconciliation bill.

To learn more about the bill, read on.

“Big Beautiful Bill” threatens to bulldoze climate, clean energy priorities

Senate Republican leaders have been scrambling to complete work on a White House-supported budget reconciliation bill which would balloon the national debt by extending tax breaks for wealthy Americans, while restricting access to healthcare and other key social services, and scaling back major clean energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. The bill would also spike consumer energy bills and dramatically weaken the country’s resilience in the face of worsening climate impacts. The House passed its version of the bill last month, and the White House has been pushing the Senate to pass the bill before the July 4 recess.

Nearly two thirds of the public oppose the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” according to recent polling. It massively threatens US efforts to combat the climate crisis and has come under fire from climate and clean energy advocates. But the majority of Republican elected officials currently support the bill, despite the fact that many of its energy-related cuts will disproportionately harm rural areas and red states. 

The bill would cut jobs and harm the nation’s clean energy industry by cancelling incentives for EVs and by ending tax credits supporting clean energy investments and infrastructure, including solar and wind energy. It places onerous restrictions on tribes and public utilities developing clean energy transitions, which would have the effect of killing many such ventures. It would lead to increased pollution and public health risks by cancelling funds for monitoring air pollution. A program subsidizing renewable fuels production would be rewritten to benefit large agribusiness and, perversely, increase rather than decrease carbon emissions from biofuels production.

Senate Republicans appear to have stripped out some of the bill’s most extreme climate harms in a bid to pass it by simple majority rather than a 60-vote margin. Provisions withdrawn include repealing an EPA rule limiting air pollution from cars, a controversial provision which would allow project developers to bypass judicial environmental reviews by paying a fee. (Other provisions that have similarly removed from the Senate bill: a measure defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a set of rules making it easier for Congress to overturn regulations, the removal of Medicare coverage for undocumented migrants and those needing gender-affirming care, and measures attacking sanctuary cities’ ability to withhold support for immigration enforcement.)

In the face of widespread public opposition as well as rulings by the Senate Parliamentarian, the bill is still being modified by its sponsors. A controversial provision backed by Sen. Mike Lee to sell off as much as 2.2 million acres of public lands has been scaled back; the bill currently proposes to sell off as much as 1.2 million acres of public lands. Senator Maria Cantwell was not impressed by the partial retreat, saying that “while I appreciate that Sen. Lee has been forced to backpedal, I don’t trust him, and I don’t trust this process.”

States push back on blocks to clean transportation

After recent action by the Trump administration to block federal funds going to states for EV charging infrastructure, including Oregon and Washington, many states and several organizations (including Climate Solutions), sued. This week a federal circuit judge lifted the funding block. The Trump administration has within one week to challenge the decision.

This action comes as states continue to advance solutions on their own. Recently in Washington State the Department of Commerce and Clean and Prosperous Institute unveiled the first public EV fast charger funded by Washington’s Climate Commitment Act (with wicked cool battery technology to fuel the chargers vs. directly from the grid) and the State Legislature voted to expand the successful clean fuels program.