Congress
Cassidy plans to keep pushing foreign pollution bill
Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy says he will use part of his remaining time in Congress to lobby for passage of legislation that would put a price on certain polluting imports.
“I’d like to try to get it done this Congress,” said Cassidy, who over the weekend lost his chance to compete in a run-off GOP primary after running afoul of President Donald Trump and his supporters. “But if not, I’m comfortable that there will be somebody who would be interested in pushing it. Now that folks understand the concept, they have very much gotten into it.”
The bill, would slap a tariff on certain products because of their impact on the environment, including greenhouse gas emissions — a goal with bipartisan support. Conservative advocates have called the proposal and those like it a slippery slope toward a domestic carbon tax.
But in an interview this week, Cassidy said six Senate Republicans have been meeting about the policy in a sign of growing interest. He declined to name the members of the group outside of himself and co-sponsor Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), but said the lawmakers engaged represent a “spectrum of our caucus.”
“I can’t tell you that they’re all ready to go to the floor. But they’re all very much interested in the concept and understand the objectives. They have gotten to the point where they realize that we are paying for China not adhering to environmental standards,” Cassidy said.
He will have to triage his priorities now that his time in Congress has been involuntarily cut short: Cassidy said Tuesday he has met with aides about “what do we think we can complete, what can we pass off.”
Cassidy has been aggressive in advocating for his pollution fee, though, including asking Trump administration nominees and officials whether they would consider the concept. Last month, during an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, he pressed Energy Secretary Chris Wright to reaffirm his support for a pollution-related import tariffs.
Wright stopped short of a full endorsement but said he shared Cassidy’s “passion” for ensuring American manufacturers are not disadvantaged by adhering to stricter pollution standards than countries like China.
“I share absolutely your mission and want to continue to work with you on your particular mechanism for the way to achieve that, but you and I are very aligned on this issue, and it is important,” Wright said.
Josh Siegel contributed to this report.
Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy predicted Republicans will lose the House in two weeks, citing historical midterm trends while also criticizing the sitting GOP leadership for how they’ve managed the chamber.
“In the last 100 years, all off-year elections, whoever is the party in power has the White House, has lost seats, and it’s only a few seats for the majority,” McCarthy said in an interview with Bloomberg TV Thursday.
Democrats, he added, will “get a majority” in the House: “I’m not quite sure how big it is, but they will probably win the majority.”
The former speaker, who ushered in the current GOP House majority in 2022 but only led the conference for less than a year before being booted from the speakership, went on to fault his own party for giving the election away.
“It’s not that the Democrats are going to win this election,” he said. “Republicans are going to lose it.”
He pointed to the skimpy House legislative calendar as a factor. Speaker Mike Johnson and his deputies have routinely canceled scheduled session days amid member revolts that have undermined his grip on the razor-thin majority.
“You’re only given 24 months in a majority to manage it. They were in the fewest amount of days. They let the Democrats dictate,” McCarthy said. “You have to give a reason why to win. What are the three things Republicans will do if they win the majority? I can’t tell you what that is.”
Still, McCarthy cautioned that if Democrats win the House, it won’t be because they have laid out their own agenda and warned that he believes that Democrats will face their own hurdles.
“Democrats are not popular. They haven’t laid out an agenda on what they’ll do,” McCarthy said. “So they’ll have a really hard time governing in the next Congress.”
North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer said Thursday that he had concerns about Elon Musk’s influence over national security matters after Ukraine was blindsided by a disruption of a satellite communications service developed by Musk’s SpaceX.
“We’re putting too many eggs in one company’s basket when it comes to our space assets,” the Republican member of the Armed Services Committee said. He added about Musk that he was concerned about the power of “one individual and one company over America’s ability to protect the domain of space, which is a war-fighting domain.”
Cramer received a briefing Thursday from Air Force Secretary Troy Meink that he said focused on getting an update on Starshield — a military product based on SpaceX’s Starlink technology. Cramer told reporters before the briefing that he wanted Congress and the Pentagon to “pour a lot of resources … into making sure there’s lots of competition both for satellite production and satellite launch.” “I’m uncomfortable with the potential vendor lock in space, and I think the events of the last couple of weeks have demonstrated greater concern, even than just simply cost,” Cramer said.
Musk has been under days of scrutiny — including fresh pledges by Democrats to investigate him next year — after the Wall Street Journal reported that he ordered the recent slowdown in Starshield capabilities over the Russia-Ukraine war theater.
Cramer, asked about the Journal reporting after the closed-door briefing, said that he wasn’t sure if Musk ordered the slowdown and that the “culpability of multiple people … was left somewhat loose.”
“By that I mean, discussions with the president before, discussions with the president after. … Obviously I don’t think it could have possibly happened without Elon Musk’s knowledge, whether or not you know how supportive he was one way or the other,” Cramer said.
Cramer added that he believed there could have been a broad misunderstanding within the U.S. government and within SpaceX about how reliant Ukraine was on the satellite technology. But he said it was incumbent that the operation of satellite technology like Starshield must “be exclusively with the authority of the United States government.”
“There are certain things the government has to do that can’t be so dependent on others,” Cramer said. “And fighting wars is one of those things.”
The top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee wants to revive a clean energy tax credit program he argues was a booming success — and says he has the receipts to prove it.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon is releasing a new report of IRS data, shared first with Blue Light News, showing that, in the first two years of the Democrats’ 2022 climate law, nearly $2.5 billion in direct payments went directly to schools and other tax-exempt entities to cover electric school buses, rooftop solar, electric vehicles and more.
Wyden said in a press release the numbers prove there is “massive demand” for “any and all” programs that lower energy costs and rebuild aging infrastructure, after Republicans gutted many of these wind and solar tax credits in their tax and spending megalaw last summer.
“When Democrats have a trifecta of power, reinstating the wind and solar tax credits and bolstering the Direct Pay Program will be a top priority to help bring an end to Trump’s energy crisis,” said Wyden, who is poised to take back the Finance gavel if control of the Senate flips in the midterms.
The report, prepared by Democratic staff for the committee, argues the current “energy crisis,” where Americans’ utility bills are rising, was manufactured by Republicans and the direct result of the Trump administration’s clean energy incentive rollbacks.
Wyden said he would revive the solar and wind tax credits if given the chance to chair the Finance Committee again, plus boost what’s known as the Direct Pay Program, which schools and tax exempt entities can use on rooftop solar, electric vehicle purchases, heat pumps and more.
“If we’re back in the majority — and I think we will — I will be introducing that bill [to restore] the clean energy tax credits that had billions of dollars in the market in the first couple of years,” Wyden said in an interview last month regarding his plans. “I’ll be introducing that right away.”
Wyden, who has led his party on the Finance Committee since 2015, wrote the bulk of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act’s climate and clean energy provisions.
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