(Bloomberg) -- House Speaker Mike Johnson said President Joe Biden’s signature climate law would be an early target for Republicans if Donald Trump wins the presidency and the party secures control of Congress after the November election.
The law, which Democrats billed as the largest-ever investment in fighting climate change, provided hundreds of billion of dollars in tax credits and other incentives for clean power.
Republicans have long opposed the funding, with Johnson on Tuesday denigrating it as “mortgaging our children’s future to fund today’s big government bureaucracy.”
Projected to ultimately provide trillions of dollars in incentives to projects for electric vehicles, wind, solar, hydrogen and nuclear power, the law could be a ripe target for Republican hunting for ways to pay for extending Trump’s tax cuts, which expire at the end of next year.
Johnson’s remarks at a forum held by the conservative America First Policy Institute echo those of Trump, who has vowed to rescind unspent funding from the the law.
Still, Johnson told CNBC in an interview after his speech he would be open to keeping some of the law’s energy tax credits, conceding it wouldn’t be possible to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act in its entirety.
“You’ve got to use a scalpel and not a sledgehammer, because there’s a few provisions in there that have helped overall,” Johnson said without elaborating on which provisions he would keep.
Several Republicans have implored the speaker not to repeal the climate law, saying it would undermine private investments and stop projects that have already begun.
Earlier: House Republicans Tell Johnson Not to Repeal Climate Law
“A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return,” a group of Republicans wrote to Johnson last month.
Johnson, elected speaker last year after the historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy, has struggled to unite his caucus and will likely face a challenge if Republicans maintain the House majority.
“Speaker Mike Johnson’s pledge to gut popular investments in our clean energy future if Republicans take control of Congress shows that he’s willing to throw even members of his own caucus under the bus to do Donald Trump’s bidding,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, a progressive climate group.
(Adds Johnson remarks to news outlet in six paragraph, comment from environmental group in last.)
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