Republicans in the House jammed through their budget reconciliation bill (a.k.a. billionaire tax scam or the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”) last month, and it’s the most anti-environmental legislation ever passed in a chamber of Congress. The bill, which is currently being considered by the Senate, would stop clean energy progress in its tracks, raise energy costs for everyday people, and exact a devastating toll on our environment. Here are the top five reasons we cannot allow this bill to become law.

1. Higher energy costs for our families and communities.

The bill passed by the House would cut clean energy and energy efficiency programs, rebates, and incentives, effectively putting an end to clean energy development across the country. At a time when we need to be producing more energy, not less, cutting clean energy programs would force communities to rely on dirty, expensive fossil fuels. This bill would exacerbate already sky-high energy prices by driving up costs by hundreds of dollars a year for families nationwide. 

2. Harms public health. 

This bill would eliminate pollution reduction programs that are cleaning up our schools, ports, and transportation, while at the same time cutting funding that allows communities to track harmful pollution. The loss of these programs would mean increased toxic air pollution that causes asthma, heart conditions, cancer, premature death, and more.

3. Selling off our public lands and waters to billionaire polluters.

This bill would allow for millions of acres of treasured public lands to be sold to billionaire polluting industries, damaging our communities, environment, and public health, and contaminating our air and water.

4. Putting billionaire polluters above the law.

The bill also establishes a system that allows oil and gas companies to avoid responsibility for the impacts of pollution they create and sidestep environmental review, community input, and judicial scrutiny simply by paying a fee. This would give polluters free reign to pollute as much as they want without regard for the impacts on communities and the environment.

5. Threats to the economy and national security.

With this bill, Republicans are poised to gut widely-supported clean energy tax credits and other investments. These public investments, paired with hundreds of billions of dollars in private investments, are crucial to supporting America’s manufacturing resurgence and have created hundreds of thousands of jobs, with more than half of those jobs in Republican-held districts. If these investments were cut, those jobs would be lost and American clean energy manufacturing would stall, tanking the economy and ceding global clean energy manufacturing leadership to China.

Join Us: Take Action to Stop the Anti-Environmental Billionaire Tax Scam

LCV and partner organizations are showing up on the Hill every week to talk to Senators and urge them to protect clean energy tax credits, public lands, and our communities by rejecting this harmful bill. Join us!

• Call your senators and tell them to vote NO on Republicans’ billionaire tax scam.
• If you are in the Washington D.C. area, join us at our weekly events outside the Senate to make your voice heard — the next one is Thursday (6/12) from 11am-12pm!

President Trump and Republicans in the Senate are working overtime to pass this terrible bill so they can continue to give handouts to their billionaire polluter buddies, but its passage is far from guaranteed. There is still time for senators to reject this bill and pass a budget framework that works for everyday people, not just wealthy elites.