4 Reasons the Reconciliation Bill Is a Disaster for Our Communities and Economy

The package calls for auctioning off public lands for private profit, boosting destructive fossil fuel production, and giving commercial logging priority over conserving our national forests. 

The country's public lands are part of our national inheritance, protected over the decades by leaders from both parties so that future generations might know the natural splendor of this country. Public lands are a public trust. They should not be for sale.

These lands and forests are a critical part of the global climate solution, sucking in and storing massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, not to mention cleaning the air we breathe and the water we drink. This package seeks to destroy much of that.

Across the Lower 48, it would expose millions of acres of public lands to new oil and gas drilling by mandating quarterly lease sales controlled by industry. And it would force leases of millions of acres across the West for new coal mines.

In Alaska, it would vastly expand oil and gas drilling, commercial logging, industrial roadways, and speculative mining across irreplaceable wilderness. That would threaten resources critical to the life and culture of Indigenous Peoples and habitat relied on for hundreds of species ranging from the majestic caribou to spawning Chinook salmon.

The attacks don’t stop there.

The package calls for auctioning off upwards of half a million acres of public lands in Nevada and Utah to private buyers, with language suggesting even more expansive sales in the future.

And it would expose millions of acres of ocean waters to the risks of offshore oil and gas drilling, putting marine life and coastal communities at risk, off the coast of Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico. 

The oil and gas industry already holds 12 million acres in Gulf of Mexico leases. That’s enough to cover half the state of Indiana. It’s time to reduce, not increase, the waters exposed to the risk of the next BP-style disaster at sea.

The package includes measures that would allow oil, gas, coal, timber, and mining companies to pay off the federal government to fast-track large projects and short-circuit environmental analysis and judicial review.

Hold on. “Pay off” the federal government to green light an industrial project people have to live with for decades? Correct. 

Under these bills, a company would be able to pay a fee up front to rush federal review of a proposed project and to limit the opportunity for states to protect rivers, wetlands, and other resources or for impacted communities to represent their interests in court. 

In practice, that could mean that federal reviewers could ignore the potential for an oil well to pollute community drinking water, for example, or for a commercial logging project to threaten an endangered species, and the public would be denied its right to challenge the review in court.

At the same time, the bills propose slashing funds used for environmental assessments required by law—cuts that are sure to slow federal project review.

For $1 million, the federal government would rubber-stamp approval for a new liquefied natural gas terminal by declaring it in the public interest—whether it is or not—with no opportunity for the actual public to contest the decision.

This smacks of the kind of corruption the U.S. government and U.S. corporations have long decried in countries where paying off public officials is part of doing business.

It should have no place in this country.

We need a modern review and approval process to support the build out of clean energy production and transmission at the pace and scale required to confront the climate crisis.

That starts with siting projects where they belong, ensuring adequate staffing levels at federal review agencies, and working with local communities to ensure that they share in the benefits of projects they must live with for all time.

The federal government, though, has a duty to enforce the laws enacted to protect the environment and public health, even when that means saying no to projects that do more harm than good. No industry should be able to skirt the law by writing a check.

The package calls for gutting federal incentives that have helped drive more than $630 billion in clean energy investment by businesses and consumers over just the past three years. This is investment in new factories to make solar panels, electric vehicles, advanced batteries and the like, or to cut home utility costs by installing heat pumps and other energy-saving appliances.

Repealing these incentives would kill jobs and hamper domestic clean energy production. It would raise household electricity prices by 7 percent on average, next year alone. By 2030, it would add $26 billion to household electricity and fuel bills—and nearly double that amount by 2035. 

Every lawmaker who supports this self-inflicted economic wound is voting for higher energy bills, fewer jobs and tax increases on drivers, homeowners, energy companies and manufacturers.

. . . and hit drivers in the wallet

The package would also end popular incentives for U.S.-made electric vehicles (EVs) and repeal commonsense standards that cut dangerous pollution from cars and trucks starting with 2027 models.

This is one of the most backward-looking ideas imaginable.

It would raise the drive-away cost of a new U.S.-made EV by up to $7,500, at a time when Trump’s tariffs are already putting a new car out of reach for more consumers. 

It would punish U.S. auto workers and carmakers for daring to invest in the future. It would limit showroom choices, locking more drivers into the gas guzzlers of the past—and the tailpipe pollution that threatens our future.

And it would scuttle clean car standards the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculated would provide a staggering $2.1 trillion in public benefits over time by, for example, improving human health, reducing premature deaths, and lowering costs to drivers.

Repealing those standards would target U.S. autoworkers and -makers while increasing dangerous tailpipe pollution in every community in the nation. 

It would also make sure Americans keep buying more and more gasoline. Paying more at the pump also means paying more in gasoline taxes, all in order to enrich the oil industry and help pay for tax cuts for the rich.

The U.S. auto industry has bet its future on EVs, with some $312 billion invested or pledged for new factories that make electric cars and trucks and the advanced batteries, new and recycled, that power them. The industry itself has said that repealing federal tax breaks on U.S.-made EVs would force factory layoffs.

Successful countries invest in the future. That’s why the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act included tax credits that save low-income and middle-income drivers up to $7,500 off the cost of a new U.S.-built electric vehicle.

That’s common sense. It helps consumers and supports autoworkers and one of the country’s important domestic industries as it transitions to the vehicles of tomorrow.

The incentive is hugely popular, used by more than 250,000 drivers in just the first three quarters of 2024. 

It’s one reason why EV sales grew 11.4 percent in the first quarter of this year, compared to year-ago levels, accounting for 7.5 percent of the new-car market. U.S. automakers are big winners: General Motors sold nearly twice as many electric vehicles in the first quarter of this year as in the comparable period a year ago.

The House reconciliation package would also hurt sales of used EVs, which surged nearly 40 percent in the first quarter of this year.

The federal incentives offer low-income and middle-income drivers a credit of up to $4,000 off a second-hand electric vehicle that costs $25,000 or less. The GOP plan would eliminate that incentive.

The package would gut key programs that reduce pollution known to aggravate asthma, heart and lung disease, and other illnesses that strike particularly hard against infants, children, seniors, and people required to work outdoors.

It would rescind funding going to communities, like those along Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, that have been overburdened by pollution for decades. It would slash funding for environmental reviews, making it harder for communities to know how they’d be impacted in their own backyards by proposed projects.

The proposals would repeal funds to monitor and reduce air pollution in schools, communities, and homes. And they would end support for efforts to cut dangerous carbon pollution in low-income communities on the frontlines of climate hazard and harm.

By calling for the repeal of clean car rules finalized just last year, these proposals would mean more tailpipe pollution nationwide in the future.

This is a direct assault on public health. 

If these proposals prevail, our children will breathe dirtier air at school. We’ll suffer from more smog near ports, more toxic pollution from heavy industry, and more methane—a powerful climate warming gas—from oil and gas operations. 

And we’ll all pay the price, in more emergency room visits, more lost days from work, more premature deaths, and more of the climate disaster that’s driving dangerous heat waves, withering drought, species collapse, raging wildfires, storms and floods, and more.