By Kevin Mooney via CFACT | March 27, 2025
Republicans who are on record supporting some of the taxpayer funded subsidies in the “Inflation Reduction Act” could gum up the works for President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut wasteful spending, according to energy policy analysts.
Trump enjoys broad and deep public support for eliminating profligate expenditures, fraud, and abuse in government. But a minority of House Republicans have indicated that may vote to keep taxpayers on the hook for energy subsidies that flow back into their districts. These wayward GOP representatives would prefer to take advantage of “climate slush funds” that lack oversight.
Not a single House Republican voted in favor of the “Inflation Reduction Act” when it passed in 2022. As Jeff Reynolds reported for Restoration News, the Biden administration modeled the legislation after the “Green New Deal” and overloaded it with spending initiatives that benefit green energy initiatives at taxpayer expense. Even so, 18 House Republicans signed a letter they sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson last August indicating they would like to keep some of the subsidies. Their sentiments run counter to those of Trump, who has said he would like to eliminate IRA, and to a significant majority of the voting public that is on board with Trump’s agenda.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D–MA) initially sponsored the Green New Deal as a congressional resolution that was unfurled during a 2019 press conference. Their stated goal was to create a new “green economy” that would require the U.S. to be set on a path of “net-zero” CO2 emissions. The Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act both rely heavily on taxpayer subsidies to prop up alternatives to fossil fuels such as wind and solar. In January, Trump issued an executive order aimed at eliminating the Green New Deal and freezing at least some of the spending for IRA.
In their letter, the 18 Republicans acknowledged that IRA is a “deeply flawed bill,” but they also argued against “prematurely repealing energy tax credits” that have already been set in motion. “A full repeal,” they wrote, “would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”
Beware the Climate Slush Funds
By rationalizing their way in favor of supporting certain IRA provisions, one energy policy analyst sees the 18 Republicans compromising their own reputation. Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, called out the Republican outliers for attempting to preserve spending that would not pass muster under DOGE. That’s the department devoted to government efficiency businessman Elon Musk is operating on behalf of Trump.
Cohen says the $20 billion dollars in “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is attempting to reclaim on behalf of taxpayers is symptomatic of a larger problem. The Biden administration had parked the grant money in Citibank prior to its planned dispersal.
“The 18 lawmakers say they support eliminating government waste, but they are willfully participating in the wasteful, scandal-plagued Inflation Reduction Act,” Cohen said in an email.
This is the same law under which $20 billion in taxpayer money was funneled by the Biden administration to politically connected climate slush funds, known as green banks. From there the loot was directed to a network of green-bank subcontractors, making oversight of the funds almost impossible. The scandal was recently uncovered by newly appointed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and a team of DOGE auditors. One wonders if the green pork projects the lawmakers are so eager to save in their districts could withstand a DOGE audit. The United States has by far the world’s most sophisticated capital markets. If these projects were as viable as the lawmakers claim, they would have had little difficulty acquiring the financing from the private sector. Instead, they are content to soak overtaxed and underserved taxpayers while continuing to bankroll the climate cartel.
The Inflation Reduction Act was misnamed right from the beginning, according to “The American Energy Blueprint.” The just-released list of policy recommendations is a product of the Institute for Energy Research (IER), a Washington-based group that advocates for free market policies.
The Blueprint includes a list of policy recommendations for the Trump and makes the case for repealing the subsidies as follows:
Subsidies were created en masse for favored products and energy sources, slush funds were created to subsidize left-wing activism, spending prioritized political activism over scientific research, and tax rules were bent to hand out even more money than Congress authorized. These actions are exploding deficits and distorting energy markets, creating a death spiral of subsidization that threatens their resiliency. Where possible, the administration should halt this spending by agency action, and Congress must follow up by repealing the trillions of dollars of subsidies that were passed, particularly in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.
Voters Want Trump and Musk to Clean It All Up
In terms of public opinion, the concept of fighting wasteful spending is not a close call. Polls show the American people strongly support the president and his DODGE team. Some key stats:
- 77% support a “full examination of all government expenditures.”
- 72% agree there should be a government agency “focused on efficiency.”
- 70% say government is “filled with waste, fraud, and inefficiency.”
- Two-thirds say Congress should join the “effort to reduce government expenditures.”
Tom Pyle, the IER president, views the Blueprint as a “roadmap” for Trump to achieve his overarching goals of delivering affordable energy and robust economic growth.
“As the world’s leading energy producer, America excels at generating energy more efficiently, safely, and cleanly than any other nation,” Pyle said in a press release. “In the early days of his presidency, he is taking significant steps toward delivering on that commitment. However, much remains to be done…”
Some of the key ingredients of the Blueprint include expanding consumer choice, reducing subsidies such as those in the IRA, curbing government spending and taxation, streamlining regulations, and modernizing the permitting process.
Trump stands on the cusp of restoring an America First energy agenda. But his biggest hurdles against implementing his policy goals may not be the progressive left. Instead, a handful of some of Trump’s own Republicans stand in the way of transformative policy changes. A real opportunity exists to double down on the recommendations in IER’s Blueprint and to encourage nervous Republicans to fully embrace the Trump agenda that has become so popular amongst the voters.
This article originally appeared at Restoration News
Kevin Mooney is the Senior Investigative Reporter at the Commonwealth Foundation’s free-market think tank and writes for several national publications.
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