Biden turns to an unlikely ally to help protect his legacy

Biden and his aides have emphasized that his signature economic legislation overwhelmingly benefits Republican districts, in the hopes that Trump would face blowback from his own party if he repealed it.

Washington: President-elect Donald Trump has promised to unravel President Joe Biden’s major legislation when he takes office next month, but Biden is hoping to salvage his most prized policies with help from an unlikely source: Republicans.

With just weeks left in office, Biden and his aides have emphasized that his signature economic legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, overwhelmingly benefits Republican districts, in the hopes that Trump would face blowback from his own party if he repealed it.

The administration is also racing to award hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and finalize environmental regulations to lock in Biden’s economic agenda, including ramping up domestic manufacturing of clean energy products and semiconductors.

“They are not going to want to undermine those jobs and those businesses that we know for the first time are really strong in so many districts around the country that have been left behind under trickle-down policies,” Lael Brainard, Biden’s national economic adviser, said in an interview.

Roughly 80% of new clean energy manufacturing investments announced since the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 have flowed to Republican congressional districts, according to data from Atlas Public Policy, a research firm.

Trump and his allies have attacked the legislation, which provides at least $390 billion over 10 years in tax breaks, grants and subsidies for wind and solar power, electric vehicle battery production and other clean energy projects.

Trump, who has called global warming a “scam,” wants to claw back money included in the law, which some estimates have found could cost as much as $1.2 trillion over 10 years.

“We will rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act,” Trump said in September.

Trump has also attacked the CHIPS and Science Act, a bipartisan law aimed at reducing U.S. reliance on Asia for semiconductors by providing billions in subsidies to encourage companies to manufacture more chips in the United States.

He called it a “bad” deal that “put up billions of dollars for rich companies.”

Some Republicans are joining the White House’s effort in pressing Republican leaders to preserve aspects of Biden’s policies. In states like Georgia, which has been a big beneficiary of Biden’s climate law, some of Trump’s supporters expressed concern about how potential rollbacks of the law could result in job losses and hurt companies that have made new investments in battery, solar and electric vehicle plants across the state.

Beth Camp, a Republican state representative who supports Trump, said she worried that the president-elect’s plan to repeal much of the climate law could be “detrimental” and leave factories “sitting empty” in Georgia.

“I would hate to see that suddenly get pulled without looking at it very intently and very closely to see the economic impact to those communities,” said Camp, who represents the Concord area.

It could be politically difficult for Republicans to unravel Biden’s economic policies. In a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson this summer, 18 House Republicans wrote that prematurely peeling back the energy tax credits, which have “created good jobs in many parts of the country,” could undermine private investments. One of the Republicans who signed became Trump’s pick for the secretary of labor, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon.

“It’s not just our belief that it’s working,” said Natalie Quillian, a White House deputy chief of staff who has taken the lead on enacting Biden’s policy agenda. “I think you see some evidence of that just in elected officials who have walked back prior statements, who have adjusted their strongly held beliefs that things should be repealed.”

“The political will is shifting as we watch it,” Quillian said. “We see the benefits throughout communities.”

The Biden administration is limited in what it can do to shield its policies from Trump. Trump will be able to reverse many of Biden’s executive actions. For legislation, federal law will restrict the new administration’s ability to block funds that have already been appropriated by Congress. But with Republicans in control of both the Senate and House, Trump could halt some of the spending by passing measures that would scale back the funding in Biden’s legislation.

Quillian also acknowledged that while White House officials are emphasizing getting money out to states, they cannot significantly speed up the distribution.

“I don’t think there is a new option to implement differently or faster that makes these investments more enduring,” Quillian said.

Rather, the White House is focused on showing how the investments have benefited Republicans with the hope that Trump’s own party will persuade him to use restraint.

When Johnson said last month that Republicans may try to repeal the CHIPS and Science Act, which includes $39 billion in subsidies that Biden has said will revamp U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and reduce reliance on China, other Republicans immediately clarified that the party supported the investments. Johnson later walked back his statement.

Johnson has also said he planned to “use a scalpel” and not a “sledgehammer” on the Inflation Reduction Act.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office who runs the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank, said he thought some clean energy tax credits were all but certain to be repealed, such as the $7,500 tax break that consumers can claim to offset the cost of an electric vehicle. But he said it was too simple to assume that the Inflation Reduction Act would be repealed entirely, given that much of the funding was heading to red districts.

“I expect this to be a pretty elaborate dance as they figure out what can go entirely, what they want to scale back and what’s going to remain untouched,” Holtz-Eakin said.

Michael Linden, a former economic aide to Biden who is now a senior policy fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth think tank, also said he did not think the law would go “necessarily unscathed.” He also pointed to the tax credits for electric vehicles as well as billions in new funding for the IRS to crack down on wealthy tax evaders.

But he said it would be politically and economically unwise for Republicans to repeal the law, given that it is spurring investment in communities that have been “sorely overlooked” for decades.

State Rep. Kasey Carpenter, a Republican in Georgia, said he was also concerned about how the loss of a major piece of Biden’s agenda would affect the local economy. Although Carpenter said he was open to some repeals, he worried that changes to the law’s tax credits could reduce demand for products like solar panels, which could negatively affect clean energy manufacturers that have recently expanded in his district.

“So much money has been spent building these facilities,” said Carpenter, who represents the Dalton area. “The last thing you want to do is get it all built, and then jobs disappear.”