Disagreement among Democrats over how to fund their social and climate spending package means President Joe Biden will be unlikely to command a repeal of the Trump tax cuts as promised, but a provision to cancel one key program authorized under the 2017 tax bill still lives in the updated legislative framework.
The new Build Back Better Act legislative text, released yesterday after the White House announced a revised framework for the budget package worth $1.75 trillion, maintains a provision from the original proposal to repeal the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil and gas leasing program. Repealing the program would deliver a win to Democrats’ constituency of environmentalists, who have been putting extra pressure on Biden in recent weeks to end domestic fossil fuel projects.
The ANWR drilling program passed as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 and authorized the Interior Department to establish an oil and gas program for the leasing, development, production, and transportation of oil and gas in the “1002 Area” of the ANWR.
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Republicans hailed the program as a major win for U.S. industry and energy independence.
“This is a capstone moment in our decadeslong push to allow for the responsible development of a small part of Alaska’s 1002 Area,” Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said last August after the Trump administration finalized its plan to administer the program. “New opportunity in the 1002 Area is needed both now, as Alaskans navigate incredibly challenging times, and well into the future as we seek a lasting economic foundation for our state.”
But Democrats and liberal environmental groups opposed the program, and the Biden administration suspended all leases sold under it in June as the Interior Department began performing an environmental review on the program.
The Build Back Better Act’s ANWR provision would repeal the program altogether, cancel any standing leases, and require payments for the leases to be returned.
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The updated budget framework coincides with a full-court press by congressional Republicans against the Biden administration’s energy and climate agenda.
“There is a war on carbon-based fuels, and that’s the target that Joe Biden drew on the back of American energy the day he came into office with killing the Keystone XL Pipeline,” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming said at a press conference Wednesday.
The fates of the updated reconciliation package and the bipartisan infrastructure bill remain unclear. Progressive Democrats want more certainty that Democratic centrist Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will support the larger partisan bill before they support the bipartisan bill, something Biden said the party must resolve for the sake of his presidency and congressional majorities.
“I am back here to tell you that we have a framework that will get 50 votes in the United States Senate,” Biden told the House Democratic Caucus on Thursday. “We badly need a vote on both of these measures.”
