FROM: Matthew Davis, Vice President of Federal Policy, League of Conservation Voters
TO: Interested Parties
MEMO: Higher Energy Bills, Fewer Jobs, and Polluter Payouts… The Full Big Ugly Bill is Here

Over the past few weeks, we’ve watched Senate Republicans hastily roll out each committee’s portion of their Big Ugly budget reconciliation bill. And what we’ve seen is as alarming as it is consistent. Across every relevant committee and every section, the Big Ugly Bill attacks working families’ clean energy jobs and cost savings, slashes critical public health and climate protections, and showers fossil fuel executives and corporate polluters with massive tax breaks and special favors.

It all culminated last week, when Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) released the final, much-anticipated piece of the bill. We were holding onto lingering hope that Republicans would listen to their constituents, industry leaders, and even Elon Musk, by finally abandoning their attacks on clean energy tax credits. Surely, they’d recognize that these credits are so popular and effective that even four GOP Senators and 13 Representatives have pleaded to keep them in place. Surely, they wouldn’t want to hike families’ energy costs and eliminate good-paying jobs. Surely, they wouldn’t want to cede our global leadership on clean energy manufacturing to foreign adversaries at such a critical juncture.

But in the end, Senate Republicans stayed true to form, choosing polluters over people, again.

Senate Finance Committee Attacks Clean Energy

As we wrote about last week, the Finance Committee’s section of the Big Ugly Bill doubles down on the GOP’s efforts to ban affordable clean energy. Their portion echoes the House’s sweeping, coordinated rollback of the very tools that are helping families save money, reshore manufacturing jobs, and make clean energy the most affordable and rapidly growing source of energy out there. Specifically, the bill:

• Rapidly and effectively eliminates the clean energy and manufacturing tax credits that have spurred hundreds of billions in private investment, supported hundreds of thousands of jobs, and have helped grow the U.S.’ global leadership in energy innovation, with different words than but similar effects to the House bill. 
• Throws out consumer and residential credits for home solar, energy storage, electric vehicles (EVs), and home efficiency upgrades, cutting off families who are trying to reduce energy costs and make their homes more self-sufficient.

All told, these cuts will increase energy bills for working families by more than $110 next year and over $400 per year by the end of the decade. They’ll also tank domestic manufacturing, leaving communities across the country behind, especially those in rural areas. They’re so bad that four Republican Senators and 13 Republican Representatives have urged them not to do exactly what they are doing. 

The Big Ugly Picture: Top 5 Polluter Giveaways in Senate Republicans’ Reconciliation

With full text of the Big Ugly Bill in hand, we’re taking stock of just how sweeping and destructive this package really is, and it’s clear that this is the most anti-environmental bill in history. Across 77 anti-environmental provisions, the bill:

• Permanently sells off millions of acres of our public lands to anyone willing to buy, including foreign adversaries, while also forcing lease sales that will open up our public lands and waters to drilling, mining, and destructive development.
• Increases families’ energy costs by eliminating clean energy tax credits and consumer rebates, making impotent fuel efficiency standards, and blocking affordable clean energy development. 
• Puts polluting billionaires above the law  through corrupt new pay-to-play permitting schemes and other sweetheart deals that allow Big Oil CEOs to jam through massive polluting projects while sidestepping environmental review, community input, and judicial oversight.
• Threatens public health and increases medical costs by killing pollution cleanup programs for schools and dirty diesel trucks and buses, all while cutting funding for communities to even be able to track harmful air pollution.
• Wipes out clean energy manufacturing and hundreds of thousands jobs at just the wrong time, ceding our global competitive edge. 

This isn’t a budget. It’s not a plan for the future. It’s a fossil fuel wish list dressed up as legislation that will make life harder and more expensive for the rest of us. But don’t just take our word for it; you can see all 77 anti-environmental provisions here: 

As the Senate moves toward a floor vote on this Big Ugly Bill, every member of Congress should be asking themselves: Who does this bill help? Who does it hurt? And who will be left paying the price? 

Above the Law: Polluters Get New Pay-to-Play Rules

Part of the Senate GOP’s Big Ugly Bill that deserves special attention is the way it sets up radical new schemes to let Trump’s billionaire buddies and fossil fuel CEOs skip the rules, live above the law, and silence the public. Here’s how it works:

• Pay-to-Play Permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act: The Big Ugly Bill lets wealthy developers pay to fast-track their own environmental reviews and avoid judicial review entirely. That means no matter how flawed the analysis or harmful the project, communities can’t challenge them in court. Even if the project developer writes the environmental review themselves, it’s untouchable. Note: The Senate parliamentarian has advised that elimination of judicial review violates the rules of reconciliation. We will see whether Republicans drop this language or try to re-work it to pass Byrd challenges. 

• LNG Exports, No Questions Asked: This bill would allow oil and gas companies to simply pay a fee and bypass legally required review of whether liquified natural gas (LNG) exports are in the public interest. That means no analysis of impacts on consumers, energy prices, or national security is needed for a rubber-stamped approval. (Just months ago, the Department of Energy review of LNG export projects detailed the large price increases and negative impacts on consumers – no wonder gas executives asked for this corrupt pay-off scheme!) 

In an unprecedented power grab, these provisions put polluters, not people, in charge of the law. In the U.S., we don’t let the highest bidder rewrite the rules, and we won’t stay silent while communities are stripped of their voices.

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