FROM: Matthew Davis, Vice President of Federal Policy, League of Conservation Voters
TO: Interested Parties
MEMO:  Polluters’ Big Week in Congress: Big Ugly Bill is Great for Polluters, Terrible for the Rest of Us

Senate Republican Chairs started unveiling their committees’ portions of the budget reconciliation bill last week, and it’s just as bad as the House-passed abomination. At every turn, the bill takes a swipe at working families with one hand, while tossing another tax break or giveaway to polluter billionaires and corporate CEOs with the other.

And nowhere is that clearer than in the bill text released last week by the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) and Commerce, Science, & Transportation (CST) Committees. If you’re a fossil fuel CEO, you’re in luck. If you’re a kid hoping to breathe clean air while you’re in class? Not so much. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. From axing air pollution reduction grants for communities and schools to creating a new, corrupt,  pay-to-play permitting scheme that lets fossil fuel companies skip the line and puts their projects above the law, the priorities are clear: protect polluter profits, not people.

In this memo, we’ll take a look at:

• The attacks on our health and polluter giveaways pushed by Senate Republicans last week
• The Big Ugly Bill (a.k.a. polluter and billionaire tax scam) setting its sights on raising our energy bills and selling off our public lands
• Congressional hearings for polluters’ top cabinet allies
• Attacking International Climate Programs and the Free Press, Undermining Bipartisan Appropriations and Cosigning Russ Vought’s and Elon Musk’s Rampage Across Our Government

Rolling Back Environmental Programs & Protections

 Taken together, the EPW and CST bills are a demolition plan for public health, climate action, and our children’s future. They don’t just scale back critical environmental programs and protections; they eliminate them entirely. Among the most outrageous rollbacks:

• Air Pollution Cleanup in Schools: Slashes funding to reduce air pollution in the places where our kids are supposed to be learning.
• Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund: Wipes out support, which also leverages tens of billions in private investments, for local projects that cut carbon pollution and build clean energy solutions.
• Diesel Emissions Reduction: Eliminates a long-standing, bipartisan program that’s been getting dirty diesel trucks and buses off the road and their pollution out of our lungs.
• Environmental Justice Block Grants: Cancels long-overdue investments in neighborhoods that have been hit hardest by pollution and industry wrongdoing.
• Methane Emissions Reduction: Cuts efforts to make polluters pay to clean up their methane leaks, which are a major driver of climate change, smog, and health threats.
• Vehicle Emissions Standards: Zeroes out penalties for non-compliance of fuel economy standards, one of the most important tools in driving down emissions, costs at the pump, and asthma attacks.

These are programs that protect kids, workers, and vulnerable communities every single day, and drive down families’ energy costs. And Senate Republicans want them gone just so corporate polluters can keep padding their record profits.

Unprecedented Perks for Polluters

The very same bill that guts the programs that protect our air, water, and health includes some of the most outrageous attempts to formalize corruption and deliver benefits for fossil fuels we’ve ever seen. Among the most egregious handouts:

• Pay-to-Play Permitting Scheme: Creates a new corruption tip for polluters. If you’re a wealthy corporate CEO, you can buy a fast-tracked slapdash environmental review that disregards your project’s impacts on the environment and our communities and can’t be challenged in court for any reason.
• Rollback of EPA Emissions Standards: Repeals tailpipe pollution rules for light- and medium-duty vehicles, giving oil and gas companies a pass on toxic emissions and undermining cleaner car standards that protect public health and reduce costs for families and businesses.

While communities are told they can’t even have clean air, Big Oil is told they can have what they want with a rush order delivery for just a little extra payment.

Surprise Attack on… Weather Forecasts??

In a move so bizarre it wasn’t even included in the 78 anti-environmental provisions in the House-passed bill, the CST bill attacks one of the most universally relied-upon public services: weather forecasting. The bill eliminates critical research funding at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that we need for complex forecasting systems.

It also shamelessly strips NOAA funding to protect coastal communities from storm surges and flooding, support local resilience planning, and construct key infrastructure, including piers and marine labs.

At a time when hurricane season is ramping up and coastal communities are already on edge, this is an especially low blow. Should we really be taking advice on weather forecasting from the party that produced a FEMA director that didn’t know there was such a thing as hurricane season?!

Looking Ahead: Public Lands Selloff, Killing Clean Energy Jobs, Polluter Allies Testifying, and More

The coming weeks are going to be critical for defending against attacks on our communities. Here are three major storylines we’re watching this week and going forward:

Big Ugly Bill

This week we expect the Senate Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) and Finance Committees to release their portions of the Big Ugly Bill (a.k.a. polluter and billionaire tax scam). Here are some questions we have as we wait for text to review:

• Will Senate Republicans cosign the House’s expansion of dirty energy on our public lands and waters and greenlight corrupt pay-to-play schemes for polluters to completely disregard the environmental impact of their pollution?
• Will extremists force the selloff of our public lands, depriving states of royalties that fund essential services? Or will Republican Senators stand up to keep public lands in public hands?
• At least four Senate Republicans have publicly demanded changes to the House’s attacks on job-producing and energy cost-lowering clean energy tax incentives, and now 13 House Republicans who voted for the bill are urging the Senate to do the same. Will the Finance committee listen to their colleagues and stop the attacks on clean energy that disproportionately benefit Red states and districts?

Congressional hearings for polluters’ top cabinet allies 

As if the polluter and billionaire tax scam isn’t enough excitement for them, fossil fuel lobbyists will be eagerly anticipating testimony about the Trump administration’s FY26 budget proposal from Secretary of Energy Chris Wright at the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday, as well as Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday and at the House Natural Resources Committee on Thursday. The drastic cuts they propose, some of which we wrote about last week, would drive up costs for families and businesses, derail our clean energy transition, eliminate good-paying jobs, undermine the reliability of our electricity grids, and put our beloved public lands at risk. Here are some things we’re watching for in these hearings:

• A staggering 30% cut to the National Park Service and an even more jaw-dropping 72% cut to National Conservation Lands funding, as part of a broader effort to gut public land protections and put them at risk of being sold off to polluters. Will Republicans oppose efforts to sell off our public lands?
• The budget proposes a 75% cut to the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), which works full time on deploying clean energy and lowering household energy costs, and completely eliminating the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) offshore wind program. Will congressional Republicans endorse the Trump Administration’s efforts to ban clean energy?
• In an affront to the widely celebrated bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act, there is an attempt to use Land and Water Conservation Fund dollars for non-conservation purposes. Will Republicans go back on their bipartisan agreement, which was signed into law by President Trump during his first term?
• Will Secretaries Wright and Burgum and congressional Republicans stand up to Russell Vought’s illegal schemes to steal congressionally mandated spending meant to protect our public lands and waters, drive down energy costs, boost grid reliability, and deploy clean energy jobs?

Attacking International Climate Programs and the Free Press, and Cosigning Russ Vought’s and Elon Musk’s Rampage Across Our Government

This week, the House is scheduled to vote on a partisan package rescinding funding for appropriations that had passed on a bipartisan basis. The package claws back nearly half a billion dollars in funding that was already appropriated by Republicans and Democrats together to help other countries recover from climate-fueled disasters and to build clean energy projects around the world, among other international aid priorities. What’s more, the bill attacks public broadcasting, a pillar of the free press and a healthy democracy. Here’s what we’re watching ahead of this week’s expected House vote:

• Will Republicans continue ceding US leadership and responsibility on climate? We are responsible for the most emissions of all time, and now Republicans want to take away assistance for countries who need help with recovery and want to be part of the solution.
• Locally-run public television stations and public radio stations are among  the most trusted and reliable news sources available. They are critical tools for educating the public about climate change and our democratic systems, and communicating during extreme weather emergencies when other communications systems go down. Will Republicans cut funding for these popular, independent news outlets and educational and community resources?

The rescissions proposal notably does not ask Congress to approve ALL of the federal spending that has been illegally frozen by the Trump administration, meaning that even if this package passes, there will still be hundreds of billions of dollars of funds illegally withheld, including funds dedicated to reducing harmful pollution, protecting endangered species, reducing energy usage, and so much more. By even sending a rescissions message to Congress and acknowledging this legal pathway to undoing congressional appropriations, the administration is all but admitting that they do not have the legal authority to withhold the billions of dollars in essential programs mandated by Congress and are openly breaking the law. Will Republicans stand up to Elon Musk, DOGE, and Russell Vought’s illegal schemes? Or will they defend their Article I authority and demand that the administration comply with the Impoundment Control Act?

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