WASHINGTON — In legacy mode, outgoing President Joe Biden’s White House is warning the Republicans who are about to take power against repealing his biggest achievements.
“Repealing President Biden’s signature laws would be an historic redistribution of wealth from working Americans to Big Pharma and China,” Andrew Bates, a senior White House spokesperson, writes in the subject line of a new memo being circulated to interested parties and allies, which was first obtained by NBC News.
The memo makes an economic and political case against undoing Biden-era laws that President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans have put on the chopping block in major party-line legislation that they’re eyeing for next year, most notably the clean energy and health care provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act.
“Depriving the American people of these benefits would be a gut-punch to our economic growth,” the memo says, and it “would provoke a tidal wave of opposition from the American people.”
It serves as a mix of messaging advice for Democrats and a preview of the fight to come next year as Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress seek to use the budget “reconciliation” process to advance key parts of Trump’s agenda along party lines.
During the campaign, Trump said, “We will rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.”
Republicans won a 53-seat Senate majority and a slim House majority of 220-215 in the elections. Democrats don’t have the votes to stop them from advancing a major bill to change spending and tax laws; all they can do is make it politically painful for the GOP to slash the programs Biden and Democrats passed along party lines in his term.
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To that end, the White House memo noted that the clean energy funding under the Inflation Reduction Act — the GOP’s top target for repeal — includes benefits for many House Republicans' districts and said it has helped fuel “America’s long-sought manufacturing resurgence.”
“That includes the creation of over 330,000 clean energy jobs — disproportionately in House districts represented by Republicans. Because of the Inflation Reduction Act, we’ve already saved more than 3.4 million Americans $8.4 million on clean energy upgrades to their homes, and more than 300,000 Americans have saved over $2 billion upfront on [electric vehicle] purchases,” Bates wrote. “We have also capped the price of insulin at $35, Medicare has already negotiated lower costs for 10 major drugs, and more Americans have health insurance than ever before.”
The memo said that significant grants for projects under the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as the CHIPS and Science Act, “have been locked-in” and that more will become available over the 10-year horizon.
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“These landmark achievements are so popular with the American people that Republican members of Congress who voted to prevent them are now being caught trying to take credit for their benefits, and even writing formal letters advocating against their repeal,” Bates wrote.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., a Finance Committee member, said all unspent funds under the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as other Democratic-led programs, are fair game for cuts to find savings to pay for an extension of the Trump tax cuts and other provisions of the GOP's planned party-line legislation.
Other Republicans say there are plenty of other places for the GOP to find cuts to finance their multitrillion-dollar effort.
“The good thing is there’s been so much waste and reckless spending over the last four years, it’s going to be a target rich environment,” said Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., a member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, which will play an important role in writing the GOP bills next year.
Murphy said he also favors slashing Affordable Care Act subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act, which the Biden administration has used to limit insurance premiums for many in the middle class. The money will expire at the end of 2025 unless Congress renews it.
“ACA subsidies to insurance companies — does nothing for health care,” he said. “I think a lot of it needs to go away.”
Asked whether the slim margins could hinder House Republicans when it comes to passing the major party-line measures, Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said it’s a familiar dynamic for them.
“What else is new?” he said.
