House Republicans are passing a major energy bill Thursday … that has no chance to pass the Senate or be signed into law by President Joe Biden, because it’s awful. But hey, House Republicans are taking a break from not getting things done and getting something done! And then they’re going on recess for two weeks, like you do. Meanwhile, Biden continues to press House Republicans on their failure to make progress on producing a budget and moving ahead with debt limit negotiations.
The “Lower Energy Costs Act” would slash environmental regulations, increase oil drilling and mining on public land, and repeal parts of the Inflation Reduction Act. Despite the name, an outside expert told The Washington Post it wasn’t at all clear the bill would lower energy costs overall, in part because repealing parts of the Inflation Reduction Act making renewable energy cheaper would counteract any of the cost savings from other parts of the bill. And, of course, going for more fossil fuels now with fewer regulations is a long-term cost—climate change is one of the most expensive things the United States and the rest of the world faces on a pure financial level (to say nothing of the loss of life), and trying to save consumers a couple cents a gallon on gas now while speeding the arrival of climate devastation is the ultimate in bad Republican math.
RELATED STORY: Kevin McCarthy tries a bluff to disguise House GOP's lack of a budget or even debt limit demands
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So House Republicans expect to pass some major legislation, which is kind of a novelty for them. It’s totally a messaging bill, but they’ve failed to pass a lot of other messaging bills, so they get a golf clap if they push this one through.
But the big thing they need to be doing is raising the debt limit before the United States government goes into default, and they don’t seem to be making progress on that. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy this week tried to pretend the lack of progress was on purpose and that Biden was the one who needed to move, but Biden is now using McCarthy’s own words against him. Back in January, when McCarthy was presumably still high off the victory of being elected speaker on the 15th vote, he rashly said, “our very first responsibility, we both should have to pass a budget … so the country can see the direction we're going.” Around the same time, House Majority Leader Steve “David Duke without the baggage” Scalise said their budget was “due in April” and “we’re going to work to meet our deadline.”
Biden made a budget proposal in early March, but there is no indication House Republicans will have a budget in April, as McCarthy’s letter to Biden earlier this week seems to have been intended to distract from. McCarthy has also tried to blame the March, rather than February, arrival of Biden’s budget for their delays, as if Republicans were patiently waiting for Biden’s budget so they could seriously engage with it and try to arrive at a compromise.
Biden’s plan would tax the very wealthy and use that to pay for things like restoring the expanded child tax credit that lifted millions of children out of poverty in 2021, while also reducing the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years. He seems eager to have Republicans release a budget that he could publicly contrast with his proposal. Maybe that’s part of why they’re being so slow about it, although incompetence can never be discounted as an explanation for anything coming from House Republicans these days.
Biden, who always has been a bit of a comedian, is pressuring Republicans to deliver their budget proposal before they leave for that two-week recess.
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This is a big deal, folks. Biden exposes GOP deficit peacocks for the frauds they are