Will These 32 Republicans Save Biden’s Green Legacy From Trump?
District-level economic interests mixed with the House’s fine balance make a full repeal of the IRA unlikely.
The handoff.
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Bloomberg
The return of President Donald Trump, alongside a Republican-controlled Congress, raises a critical question: Will the Inflation Reduction Act be killed or merely maimed? The answer lies with those GOP representatives; specifically, 32 of them.
That is the number of House Republicans identified in a new analysis as potential nays if a vote were held to repeal former President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation. Noah Mihan and Samuel Fankhauser of the Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and Environment assessed 220 Republican representatives on how they might think about repeal. With resignations having cut that number to 218, and likely to soon take it down to 217, compared with 215 Democrats, the analysis chimes with Speaker Mike Johnson’s earlier phrasing about Republicans using more of a “scalpel” than a “sledgehammer” when it comes to the IRA.1The choice of implement is no doubt a hot topic among House Republicans gathered currently at a Trump resort in Florida to map out legislative priorities.