Liberal Democrats and climate change activists are vying to make big changes to the nation’s transit and power grid with infrastructure and social spending packages.
But Republicans have blocked many of their proposals from a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that must pass with bipartisan support and are already warning that Democrats plan to advance “Green New Deal” policies that would cripple the economy and kill jobs.
The House Republican Study Committee, which represents the largest faction of GOP lawmakers, issued a warning that the infrastructure package dedicates just $110 billion to fix the nation’s roads, bridges, and waterways.
“The remaining $1 trillion are Green New Deal provisions,” Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, warned.
Among the provisions is a $66 billion allocation to expand rail, which Banks said is part of a plan to eliminate air travel that was touted in the Democrats’ 2019 Green New Deal proposal.
Democrats, meanwhile, are searching for ways to add more green energy and climate provisions into a $3.5 trillion social spending package the party hopes to pass unilaterally later this year through the process of reconciliation, which allows some legislation to pass with a simple majority vote.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Thursday he’d push to include provisions expanding electric vehicle use in the reconciliation package.
Schumer made the pledge hours after President Joe Biden announced “a new set of actions” to ensure electric vehicles make up half of all car sales by 2030.
Schumer said Biden’s proposal dovetails with his own “Clean Cars for America” plan to transition to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
“Some of it was put in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but a large part of it we hope to add in the reconciliation process,” Schumer said Thursday.
In the House, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat, said the Senate infrastructure bill leaves out climate policy initiatives to eliminate fossil fuels and add mass transit funding and equity initiatives that he believes are needed to address climate change.
He’s eyeing the $3.5 trillion measure as a backup plan to try to push through some of those initiatives.
“There are a lot of questions about reconciliation,” DeFazio said. “There are a lot of people who want it to be bigger over here. My most basic question is, will they allow additional money to backfill programs that are established, like transit, rail, the new social equity programs which are woefully underfunded, the wastewater drinking water?”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is among the lawmakers demanding that more climate change provisions excluded from the infrastructure package be added to the reconciliation package.
The $1.2 trillion bipartisan measure, she told CNN, “is only a sliver of the infrastructure we need” and said that lawmakers must pass legislation “to make sure that we’re fighting back against the climate crisis that is bearing down upon us.”
The Senate is currently debating the $1.2 trillion package and is expected to pass it and send it to the House for consideration later this year.
The Senate will also take up a resolution providing a framework for the $3.5 trillion package, which so far includes funding for free community college, free universal daycare, an expansion of Medicare, an increase in Obamacare subsidies, and more. Democrats want to add climate change provisions to this framework, but they’ll have to clear parliamentary hurdles that set specific rules for legislation that can pass with 51 votes.
In the meantime, Democrats and Biden are touting the climate change provisions in the narrower infrastructure package. In addition to the $110 billion on roads, bridges, and other major infrastructure projects, the measure includes tens of billions of dollars in spending they say will curb pollution and climate change.
The provisions include $39 billion for mass transit, $66 billion for passenger and freight rail, $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations, and $2.5 billion for electric buses.
The bill would provide the largest-ever federal funding package for mass transit and rail.
DeFazio said that the green energy initiatives are too few, while the money spent on more highways is too much.
DeFazio’s own transportation funding plan that passed in the House earlier this year would provide $109 billion for transit, $95 billion for passenger and freight rail, and $8.3 billion to reduce carbon pollution.
“Their transit number is lower than mine, their rail number is lower than mine, their highway number is slightly higher,” DeFazio said.
Outside groups are pressuring Democrats to go bolder on climate change legislation.
Jamal Raad, executive director of Evergreen Action, a climate change advocacy organization, said the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill “falls short of President Biden’s mandate to build a thriving clean energy economy and fails to meet his own climate commitments to the international community.”
Raad said Democrats must advance in the $3.5 trillion social spending package “the full suite of essential climate investments, including a clean electricity payment program that fulfills the goals of a clean electricity standard, long-term clean energy tax credits, a Civilian Climate Corps, investments in environmental justice, more funding for clean infrastructure and manufacturing, and the repeal of fossil fuel subsidies.”
