How to defeat the IRA subsidies, with Congressmen Chip Roy and Josh Brecheen
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Welcome to Power Hour. I'm Alex Epstein. Well, as longtime listeners know, I don't do the show regularly. I think we've done it twice in the last two years, once with Senator Cotton and once with Peter Thiel, and we had some interesting arguments to have. So what we're, the reason I'm bringing it back today is we have a very exciting development that I want to talk about with two of the main people responsible for the development. I'd say the two people most responsible for the development.

And they are Representative Josh Brockeen and Representative Chip Roy. And it's, you know, in my view, there was this huge victory that didn't have to happen in terms of the IRA subsidies. It's also a victory that is not yet final at all because we had a much improved House bill, but not a...

We haven't yet had a successful Senate bill and passage. There's still a lot of work to do. So I thought I'd talk to these guys to understand what happened, how it happened, what we can learn, how we can actually improve it going forward. So welcome, both of you. Great to be on, Alex. Thank you, Alex.

So maybe, Chip, let's start with you. Just give your sense of how bad and flawed the Ways and Means proposal came out two Tuesdays ago. Now we're recording on May 26th. Happy Memorial Day, by the way, everyone. And then, you know, the difference between what was put out and then what the final bill was. And then we'll go into the mechanics behind it.

Yeah, happy to do it. And thanks for doing this, Alex. And thanks for all of your efforts to get this issue front and center for the American people and to help us lead on this. And thanks to Josh for all of his leadership. Look, you and I go way back. We get what's important here. There's a moral imperative. There's also a national security imperative that we undo the damage and prevent future damage of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which is obviously weakening our grid. And all of your listeners know this, so they wouldn't be listening to your podcast.

But weakening our grid, undermining the markets, undermining our ability to have reliable energy. And so that imperative means that we need to act. Well, now enter where we are in this reconciliation process, right, which is a tax and spend bill that has to do with deficits and budgets and so forth. But we all know there's policies attached to those things.

And the Ways and Means Committee, they've got to deal with the tax implications, which necessarily includes the lion's share, the bulk of the impact of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, because those are predominantly subsidies, right?

So the Ways and Means Committee produced a product to try to extend the president's tax cuts under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the TCJA, but also to deal with the Inflation Reduction Act because, A, the president campaigned upon it. B, we all campaigned upon fully repealing it, terminating it, to use the president's terms.

And then importantly, we know we needed to do it. So that's the good news. The bad news is, is that what Ways and Means produced was heavily, in my view, K Street driven and sort of swamp driven, right? It was built around what's, well, this is what's possible. Here's what we need to do. We need to preserve these options. And so in basic terms,

What it did was it had no, you know, cut off at the beginning to say that no projects that start after a certain date will be allowed, right? As a basic premise. That was missing from the whole structure. And the second thing it did was had a very late...

requirement that new projects or projects that were already under construction, a late date for being in service, and then a long-term phase-out of those dates. We're talking about well into the 2030s, even having projects that could extend to the 2040s. It was nowhere near where it needed to be. Now, this is all, the last one, I don't want to filibuster, this is all putting it into context here.

We're not talking about right now the roughly 40%, the $400 billion of the trillion-ish that's available here, the

The $400 billion that is projects already in service and connected to the grid. Those weren't even being touched. Of the remaining projects, the ones that were either in process or could be new ones, we didn't believe the language was sufficient. In fact, we thought it could be massively exploited and would allow for future projects to continue, which would mean the IRA would continue and the grid would be weak. So we then set out to change that.

Yeah, I mean, well, any thoughts from you, Josh, in terms of just how the ways and means bill struck you compared to, you know, what was remotely right? Yeah, look, I think what's important to know, the one big beautiful bill, Chip and I, Ralph Norman, Andrew Clyde, were involved, Chip specifically, in

in helping design the balance, the budget neutrality element months ago to say the budget committee sets the instructions, then all these other committees go out there to make this one big, beautiful bill as much as deficit neutral in addition to a growth element that we prescribed at 2.6 year over year. Then Chip, Ralph, Andrew, and I, along with the budget committee last week had a vote. Did you meet your instructions? My great consternation over this was

To you, Alex, I'm grateful to you and others who have pointed this out. Since 1999, think wind, think solar, every time the production tax credit has been pointed to and said, hey, five years from now, two years from now, we as Congress will end this. Since it started in 1992, there's been at least 10 different times where Congress said some date in the future, we'll end it.

That was enacted. And then years later, Congress would come back and change its mind. And so to evaluate the score, did we meet budget neutrality in repealing the IRA, which has a significant cost? Those tax subsidies going to wind and solar. Stay with us on the thought of wind and solar specific to this. We knew the likelihood of starting this process years in the future, the way Ways and Means had prescribed it.

then it wouldn't happen. And so the four of us had a no vote, worked all weekend with you and others trying to get leadership, the White House to engage with us to correct that date and move the date up to 60 days after enactment. We're going to cut this stuff off specific to wind and solar. Now under Trump's term of office with him shepherding, riding herd over this to make sure the lobbyists that are now headed to the Senate to try to change the great product we came up with

Our hope is that your podcast gets out and people understand the pressure now is on the Senate and the lobbyists for wind and solar will be trying to undo what we did because we have a true repeal of the wind and solar tax credits that are the greatest threat to undermining reliable, affordable energy on our electric grid and outsourcing jobs overseas.

I'll just give a little bit of my reaction, too, because I, you know, I've been for a while getting the opportunity to talk to different groups, including Republican groups about this, this issue. And most notably, our friend August Pfluger allowed me to come speak to the Republican Study Committee, which is the biggest group of Republicans. I think there are probably 60 people or so in attendance there. And, you know, I was making the case for full termination.

And what I thought would happen is, well, the people with all these existing projects would manage to claw most of them, and then that would be the debate, like this $400 billion. But then it turned out that, and I blame myself for not anticipating this, the $400 billion wasn't even questioned.

That was the starting point that Ways and Means had operated with, which I later confirmed. It was just the question is how much new subsidy are we going to allow to happen? And then with the most dangerous subsidies, the solar and wind subsidies, there was literally this phase out where they're literally giving out new 10-year subsidies in 2031. So by...

On Donald Trump's 95th birthday, he can celebrate with wind subsidies still existing. And yet people had the gall to call it like we're terminating them, we're getting rid of it. So it was really this thing where it was not doing the job. And in particular, it was offloading the job on future Congresses.

And it's basically saying, hey, well, after Trump is president, we are trusting that you guys are going to actually phase this out versus what I was arguing for very strongly is at minimum, you have to get rid of the new subsidies and you absolutely have to have them all expire and stop under Trump's term. And so by this final agreement where it's, you know, 60, you have to be 60 days, you have to be in construction 60 days after the bill is enacted, or you have to be in service for

by 2028. That, people are acknowledging, that's a real restriction. So this was a huge thing. Basically, we went from solar and wind subsidies continue indefinitely, and we keep getting the grid spammed with this unreliable electricity that undermines our whole grid and is really an existential threat to the grid, or actually cutting it off. So it was a really, I mean, given the options, it was a really big victory. The other thing I would say to highlight this is

You know, if you look at when the Ways and Means Bill came out, of course, all the lobbyists, particularly the solar and wind people, what they said is not, oh my gosh, we got a huge victory. Can you believe it? They said, this is criminal. You're phasing out our subsidies in 2031? That's so soon. How can you possibly do that? And they're always confusing their existing subsidies and new subsidies deliberately. But they were hoping, and if you look at some of their lobbyists talking, they thought,

oh, the ways and means would be the starting point and would become even more generous. So we'd get even more of an extension of the subsidies. And they got a very rude awakening when, in fact, the subsidies got massively scaled back. And I give you guys, as well as Andrew Clyde and Ralph Norman, a lot of credit. So before we go into what succeeded, I'm curious what you guys think about

how the ways and means got to where it was, both what went wrong, but also maybe what went right in terms of maybe it wasn't as bad. Maybe it could have even been worse because I know a lot of us were working. So I was disappointed by it, but maybe it could have been worse, but particularly what went wrong. But if there's anything that went right before that, I'm interested in that too. Chip, you want to start?

Yeah, sure. I mean, look, I want to give credit to Jason Smith and his staff for taking a giant step into this mix, right? He didn't walk away from it. I mean, what they would say is that the CBO had scored $515 billion with a B out of, quote, $607 billion possible in their scoring. Now, we can nuance that, and you can better than I. But for your listeners,

But what that means is that like 92 billion was left on the table and you had to assume that their 515 billion would actually materialize out of the CBO score. Why do I bring that up? Because they were proud of that, right? I mean, to be clear and to be fair,

There was a serious political move for all the people out there who have been pushing this for a long time, encouraged the president to campaign on it. The president put it out there. The campaign was, the president was explicit about this through these negotiations that he meant terminate the green news scam, as he calls it. So we've made progress leading into this moment, but

But then what happens is staffers and the people around town, the lobby community, they all have their influences, right? Hey, guys, we got to make sure these contracts stay in place. Well, hey, the grid is already relying on these things. Oh, we're Republicans. We honor contracts. So we got to keep these going. Oh, but oh, these guys have some projects that are already invested or they already bought some land or they already leased some land. We got to keep that going. And then we got to make sure we don't disrupt, right? There's always a reason.

So they try to build it to be nebulous enough that you can ultimately drive a truck through it. I think there was a mix going on here to answer your question. I think there were some staffers of Ways and Means and Jason Smith and others who wanted to constrain. I think there were political forces to say, nah, don't strain it too much. So you've got a typical Washington kind of product. And then we used our efforts in the Budget Committee to force the conversation that needed to be had, which is the president said terminate.

So we wanted to get it close to termination, at least with respect to the projects that are started and in process, you know, not yet constructed or barely constructed. And then the ones that would be new projects. I'd love to be able to touch the existing ones, but let's kind of put that aside for a minute. We did a great job, I think, of constraining that to your point.

of getting to a place where they all have to be implemented by December 31st, 2028, and they have to have construction 5% IRS rule within 60 days of enactment. And I can tell you that the powers that be in town, the lobby community, the people that have a lot of interest in this space are freaking out, that they think that is way too tight. They are absolutely losing their mind that that is going to actually be effective.

And so for everybody out there, we need to keep our foot on the gas and at least get what we got out of the House through the Senate and hopefully try to push them to go even further with respect to ongoing projects. Gotcha. I have some thoughts on this, but Josh, any thoughts on sort of what went wrong going up to the, or right heading up to the Ways and Means thing and then after that? Yeah.

Look, Chip, Paul Winfrey, it's well known to ratchet up, ratchet down the historic use in 2001 that Chip and Paul Winfrey were able to, in communication with the speaker and with Jody Arrington, our budget committee chairman, Lloyd Smucker, others, I was in the room getting to watch this all play out months ago. That was set. And Chip would, I know, want to see a better outcome, but I would tell you it was, from my viewpoint, it was...

probably the best thing going in that drove people to a higher level of cuts than what we would have had. And so I congratulate them for doing that, for what I would say was providential in the way it just came about hours before we had to take that vote. This is months ago. It established what you may be hearing about, that dollar for dollar, for every amount of spend, we had to have savings. And so that was a Chip Paul Winfrey product, and they're to be congratulated for that.

And then the leadership to see the wisdom of that, knowing that you've got such a tight margin that you have to broker those of us that would be deficit hawks in relative balance to those in our conference who don't really care as much about the deficit. Now, Chip was talking about ways and means and the staff, and I believe it was genuine. But Chip is right. You have K Street. And again, since 1992, the production tax credit has always been reanalyzed and the promise to end it at some point in the future has always been changed.

because do not think that that lobbyist crowd, when I fought the wind subsidies in Oklahoma, there were 50 lobbyists working against me on a state level. And Oklahoma is one of the top three among all 50 states. But I can't imagine if there were 50 lobbyists working against me in Oklahoma trying to repeal these in 2018. I cannot imagine how many hundreds of lobbyists

And we're not just talking about United States, we're talking about other countries. Wind, as European investors who benefit, European people that are heavily involved in making sure that production tax credit, tax subsidies are going to them to get the return on their investment. And then for solar, of course, all the components that are directly tied to China.

So you have a lobbyist crowd that is really smart, that will use a narrative that will mix facts and try to go to not chairmen's, but you can keep in mind, you got to get this thing out of committee, right? So you had members of the committee who are getting information from lobbyists that may seem right in their mind.

But at the end of the day, as Chip said, they're all having a gnashing of teeth right now because they know this product. Thankful to the sword that was driven in the ground saying this isn't going to pass like this. We have to make a change to get a real repeal.

We've achieved that. Now the work is for everyone in America who cares about a reliable, affordable grid, reaching out to United States senators and saying, don't change it. With the House put in there, relative to the changes of 60 days after this bill is signed into law, hopefully 2025 early, if you don't have 5% of commenced construction, and if you don't by 2028 are producing power, then I'm sorry, the game is up.

Let the free market decide what energy is to be chosen, not those who have preferential treatment from government. Next thing I want to cover is how you both individually thought of drawing a line because it's a hard thing. I mean, I was told by people that I like and trust, we said, look, I know you don't like the ways and means thing very much, but it's so hard to get things to work. There's a lot of things we have to get to work at the same time, like

If this doesn't pass, then the IRA is just going to be totally preserved, which you agree is worse than what Ways and Means had. And sometimes people say, well, it's the president's bill now. It's the president's bill. You have to be careful about talking about it. And for me, look, I'm just an independent commentator. I say...

what I think it's, it's relatively low downside for me to just keep saying what I, what I think, but, you know, for you guys, I'm sure you were under enormous pressure to acquiesce way earlier. So how do you, how, how do you like, how do you decide, Hey, we're going to, I mean, I remember, you know, someone who's advising us was basically saying like, it is not a good idea to hold this up in budget.

They should not do that. They should do it when rules are coming, et cetera. So starting with Chip, how do you make this decision? I'm going to stop this here and everyone's going to be mad at me, and I might get primaried, but that's okay.

Well, look, for some of us, we're a little used to it more than others. Josh and others that he mentioned, Andrew Clyde, Ralph Norman, others, friends of mine in the House Freedom Caucus, and generally willing to take a stand. We're kind of used to taking those arrows. But it doesn't make it easy, especially when it's such a complex topic.

I had great unease even when I voted for the bill, ultimately, on the early hours of Thursday morning. I still have unease. I'm still not sure exactly how this plays out going through the Senate. But everything we do is a balancing act, and you have to humbly and prayerfully try to figure out how to, you know, walk the line, if you will.

It is very much the president's bill in the sense that most of these are core issues on which he campaigned. We're trying to honor that commitment and also remind everybody that in Article 1, Congress exists in the Constitution to work with the president. We send the bill up. We've got to get it through both houses and then get it to the White House.

So I'll just say it this way. There are a lot of moving parts. There's overall spending levels. There's overall taxation questions. There are questions about Medicaid that this podcast is not for. There's lots of variables in this mix. But one of the core issues was this issue.

And we had to make a determination that we were going to go fight for something we could be proud of so that I could look at the people that I represent in Central Texas. Josh could look at the people in Oklahoma he represents and say, you know what? We stopped another one of those solar farms that was being produced literally by just paper shuffling around with these subsidies that nobody would have ever done. It was based on the market. And we stopped one of those battery plants that a bunch of my constituents are mad about.

because they're right to be mad about them. They're right to be mad about a weakening grid. So we have an obligation to do it. And this is a little bit, you know, art, not science. You know, you know, when you see it, Josh and I and Ralph and Andrew and others, we leaned into it because it was so important. And look, I will tell you, this is still a critical component of whatever gets through the Senate. I'm not, I'm going to be a little careful here about drawing red lines. In fact, the Freedom Caucus, Josh and I, we,

expressly avoided drawing hardcore red lines to try to make this move forward. And I'll stop filibustering here. I'll just say, look, I will say this. This bill cannot get watered down or it's not going to be successful coming back to the House. So hopefully we will work with our Senate counterparts, maintain what we did accomplish, soothe everybody's concerns. Hey, this is a good thing. And the last point here.

People talk about jobs, right? That's what I keep hearing. And I've heard some of the White House. I've heard people on K Street. Chip, you're going to hurt jobs, future jobs. You're going to hurt jobs if you hurt the already existing projects. Guys, what about the jobs in natural gas? What about the jobs in nuclear? What about the jobs in pipelines?

What about the fact that you don't want to have jobs being subsidized to produce something that makes your country weaker? Right. Like people don't tell me that if I go out and try to stop, you know, a pernicious, you know, the drug, the, you know, illicit drug. Sentinel jobs. Right. Right. Like, oh, I'm hurting jobs. Look, I want to have a grid that's stable. So I'll yield back to Josh and you. But that's that's my perspective.

I like how you keep using filibuster, which is appropriate since that's what we avoid in reconciliation. I'll get to you, Josh, in a second, but I was just doing some thinking yesterday about the jobs issue and the fairness issue. And we're talking about the existing projects, which I'll bring up when we talk about the Senate, because I think it's really important to hit on the idea that the existing projects absolutely do not deserve their subsidies.

And their subsidies are immensely harmful. But people talk about, oh, what's the harm that you're going to do to these subsidized projects that are harming the grid? But what they don't talk about is what is the harm that the subsidized projects did to the existing projects? Because

The existing projects were set up. If you think about coal plants and natural gas plants, they were set up with certain economic expectations. People invested in those plants based on the idea that we had a grid that valued reliability and they could get a certain income stream by selling to the electricity markets. Then the electricity markets were totally spammed by unreliable solar and wind.

that always are the, when they're on there, once they're subsidized, they're the lowest marginal cost producer, even without subsidies, but certainly with them because they have no fuel cost. So every time they're available, they take away revenue, operating time and revenue

from the reliable plants. They also suppress the temporary prices of the auctions. So the reliable plants operate less time and get paid less money per time. Now we end up paying all that money in subsidies and in capacity payments and all sorts of stuff.

But nobody cares about the people who had totally legitimate investments in reliable power, who got their investments stolen and destroyed by the subsidized movement. So that's the cancer we have to get rid of. If you want to have empathy for anyone, it's all those coal plants and those workers who were doing perfectly good things and could have provided low cost, reliable electricity for decades more. And they just got driven out of business.

by this cancer. But I still want to ask Josh, to go back to you, what was your, you know, we talked about this a little bit at the time, but tell listeners, what was your calculation in terms of saying, hey, I'm going to draw the line here, and it needs to reach a certain level of improvement, otherwise I can't give my support to it? Yeah, it was plain. It was truth.

It had to be what we said the budget blueprint was going to be early in the year in February. And then we said that we had to meet certain conditions. And as some of us, you know, or even the night of the time we voted present to give it a chance to move along, we finalized some of these issues that were still left hanging with salt and other considerations.

to look at leadership and say, this is about truth. And this is not just an exercise where we're stapling the committee products back together. The question before the budget committee was, did you meet the instructions? And again,

The greatest predictor of the future is the past. And when Congress has done this 10 different times, said, oh, someday in the future, that production tax credit's going to end 10 different times. History shows you it never does because the lobby power is tremendous. Then under President Trump's term of office is when this had to end so that he would be the one who had the pen

that if they tried to change it, go back on their word, he had the veto ability. And so putting this under President Trump's term mattered. It was a matter of being able to go out to the American people and say, we did what we said. And it's about truth.

Speaking of truth, there's a couple of things that impressed me, you know, working with you guys through this process. You know, we've been in one way or another working on it for a while. I mean, Chip and I have been one way working with one another since 2017 or something like that before he was in Congress. And I've always appreciated Chip. You're you're focused on these issues, even though they're not your committee issues.

You've had really good people on your team, like Hal Duncan in the past where it's like really good on energy. But I didn't know Josh as well. And one thing that impressed me about you, Josh, I'm going to leave the specifics anonymous, but we were at a certain meeting and you were talking to a certain wealthy person who was advocating subsidies.

And often when I see people in that situation, they'll sort of nod. And you were just questioning that person, just like you would question somebody who wasn't a billionaire who made $20,000 a year. And you're saying like, this doesn't make sense to me. And you kept arguing. And I thought, wow, this, he is really interested, uh, in the truth, uh,

on this issue. And then also when I had the honor of helping during some of these negotiations and advising. And one thing I noticed is, I'm not somebody who stands for any industry. I'm advocating killing the carbon capture stuff for the oil and gas people. And at least in the discussion that I was on, I was the only outside person on. And I was being only asked what I thought was true. There were no lobbyists. There's nobody who's like, you guys were only interested in, hey, tell me the truth about

what you think. So that's, I don't know if you have any comments on that, but that's, that was very notable to me as clearly not what had happened, what happens often in these situations. Alex, if you want me to respond, look, what I can tell you, what, you know, aren't Chip respect and hopefully others of us is people expect you to pretend.

And when you start being a person of truth, people go, oh, you're different. You're not a pretender. You're not a Pharisee. You're not an actor. And that's not why I got involved in politics is to become an actor. I got involved because the truth matters and having someone that's an honest broker represents you. That is what made America great initially. And that's probably the thing that's undermining, that's eroding our structure, our people who are self-interested,

self-motivated ambition and ambition as john adams said um where you find ambition revenge and avarice which means greed um that undermines the constitution as if a whale goes through a net um that's john adams and so uh

Truth matters, man. So if I could add to that, Alex, you know, I'm a University of Virginia grad and, you know, there's a famous Jefferson quote that for here we are not afraid to seek truth wherever it may lead, nor tolerate error as long as reason is left to combat it.

And it was kind of one of the sort of founding kind of concepts at Virginia. And and but I think it has been lost a lot over the years. And I want to just give a shout out to Josh and for his integrity and for wanting to seek truth and righteousness in all of this and trying to do the right thing and to honor commitments along the way. And it's a tough line to walk. Right. Right now. I mean, I ended up voting for the bill, as I said earlier.

somewhat reluctantly for a variety of reasons. One, I wish we'd have gone further on the Inflation Reduction Act existing projects. And I wish we'd have gone further on Medicaid. But and so I've got a lot of people on my right flank who are mad because we put out the truth, which is guys, 40% of the dollars are still going to flow.

And that means you're going to enrage some people who are going to go, why didn't you repeal at all? And I'm going to say, good question. But part of that is level setting the truth. And then I have to go back and say, if I'm comfortable with the bill, say, well, I voted for the bill because it moved the needle significantly. It was what I truly believe was the best we could get in that moment. Now, I'm still hopeful we'll get more in the Senate.

And we got to factor in a lot of things. My point of bringing this up to your point is we have to be truthful with the American people. We have to lay it all out there. And then we have to be willing in a republic, a republican form of government, to take the arrows of leadership. That means making the tough call of voting for something that isn't perfect. That means taking the tough arrows of voting against something that may be politically expedient to vote for or you may have a lot of pressure to vote for.

That's what a Republican form of government requires of us under our Constitution, to put the truth out there and to go try to navigate it. I think we've done that, but I still think we've got a lot of work to do to get through the Senate and finish this job.

Can I add one more thing? Yeah, of course. And what we're talking about, the $400 billion that Chip keeps talking about the IRA. So anyone who would talk about, well, you're going to catch people in the middle of these projects and you're going to pull the rug out when they started with this promise. The $400 billion he's talking about is the change we made was any prospective decision to try to get into this tax subsidy is going to end.

60 days after this bill is signed into law, you have to have 5% commenced construction. What Chip's talking about is all the projects that were promised 10 years on the production tax credit, those are going to get paid out. And what he's saying and what many of us are saying is there's many things in government that people sign up and you have a change of administration, think the Keystone Pipeline, right? Yeah, no kidding. That's quite a policy change to abolish it.

So just so everyone understands, we did as much as we could on the House side. And then, you know, I'm hopeful like Chip is that we can have a real conversation about that $400 billion still hanging out there without making sure we keep our foot on defense, making sure that the changes, the right changes, no new projects starting in the Trump administration.

They're going to be allowed in if they don't make a certain threshold. And it's important to stay on offense. Sorry, Alex, it's your podcast. No, no, you guys are here. I want you to talk. It's important for us to stay on offense, okay? We did a good thing, but there's more we could do. And I want to stay on offense to remind people that, hey, make them play on our field, which is you go justify where we're going to continue to subsidize unreliable energy.

I want them to have to justify that. You go justify why Texas is getting $3 billion a year, $3 billion a year of federal borrowed money, adding up to the debt, adding more to the deficits, and

And taking that $3 billion and putting it into the pockets of billion-dollar corporations, usually run by leftists, to go fund a lot of profiteering for Chinese companies and to make our grid less reliable. Somebody explain to me why I am obligated to do that for the next 10 years.

I do not believe I am. So I'm going to remain on offense that we should go after those projects as well. They should be phased out because we want our grid to be reliable. We want more gas. We want more nuclear. We want to have a, you know, abundance of reliable energy so that our economy can grow and prosper and our national security can be strong. We should be on offense on that. Proud of what we've done. Maintain it and go on offense in the Senate.

Yeah, getting to the Senate, I'm curious, without giving away any secrets that could be destructive, I'm curious if you guys have any additional insights into what made these negotiations effective. And, you know, the point you just made is one that I...

as I was trying to help really picked up on was just realizing, wait a second, everyone's leaving this 400 billion on the table. Let's attack that. So any chance I got and people got annoyed with me, I'm like, you should not have let this 400 billion on the table. This is a huge gift, which you do not deserve. How could you possibly demand one cent more? And I felt like that as the starting point, that is the truth. That's the logical starting point. But by starting it with termination, termination is the ideal. You don't deserve $1 of this.

And then you should have to argue for every one of those $400 billion versus those being table stakes. I felt like even though we introduced that a little bit late, that was effective. And that definitely needs to be the framing of the Senate. So curious what you guys think about that, but also any other negotiating things, again, that don't give away future effectiveness.

Yeah, I mean, I'll throw it out there, Josh, and just say I agree. And I just said, I don't repeat it, that going on offense matters strategically because it's an indefensible position. Right. I mean, I understand there will be a honorable position that is, well, we have to honor the agreements.

Well, I take issue with that because tax policy changes with the change of administration, tariff policy changes, regulatory policy changes, executive actions change, circumstances change, and frankly, truths are truth. We need a reliable grid. So if somebody made a bad bet in saying they wanted to go take these massive subsidies, which were effectively, quote, free money, they're not free, you know, economics 101, but quote, free money.

to then make our grid less reliable, I'm going to take issue with that. And I think we need to be on offense on that point. But the broader perspective is we need to be really –

I'm positive about what we accomplished. We need to be clear about the things that we were able to do and why we're able to do that in the House to sort of inform the Senate and put that all in context while being on offense. I think those are going to be the critical kind of negotiating techniques, because what we were able to accomplish is actually good and righteous.

Because you can't say that you're going to save $500 billion if you don't believe it, right? If you think, well, guys, look, I don't think that's going to be true when you're relying on sort of backdoor regulating, right? Backdoor limiting, which is what the original Ways and Means Bill was doing, which we didn't talk about very much. But we talked about the out years, the 2031 and the four-year phase-outs and the long runway.

for projects and no immediate construction date. What we didn't talk about is that they were heavily relying on restrictions on Chinese minerals

and where the minerals come from to say that, well, that'll stop most of the flow for at least solar and maybe batteries. Well, we tend to be a little suspicious of that, that there'll be ways to game that and then run it. And if your goal is ultimately to turn off the future projects, turn them off, right? Stop playing games. So I think that's important. Josh, I'll turn to you.

Back up what you guys said relative to every year they stay in place, every year that there's more payout that we know since since 2022, I believe last three years, the Energy Information Administration says that 61 percent of all new electricity generation on our grid is coming from solar. About the same time frame, 11 percent all new electricity.

all new generation coming from wind. So what is that displacing? That is displacing all of it in our congressional districts, the coal plants we know have been shutting down for five and 10 years. That is displacing natural gas. And so it almost, I would say in a one-to-one ratio, if you look at where natural gas was relative to these other technologies a few years ago, we're displacing the liquid gold that is within the United States, national security, ease of access,

U.S. jobs and we're outsourcing to China because we know some of these components that make up solar, 97% coming directly from China, others 80%. And so absolutely gaming, moving the solar components that are having to come out of China to another country, rebrand it, repackage it, send it in. All these timeline changes were very important. Plus not just going after the residential side, but the commercial side, thanks to the expertise on this call that you all were able to pull off.

And so our national security, when we are dependent on these other countries, think of what's just happened in the last several years with the European Union countries. Here they have been buying $20 billion worth of fossil fuels because their electricity generation, their own energy consumption was in jeopardy. And they're paying more now to Russia, $20 billion, than what they've given to Ukraine.

Think national security when you become so reliant on other countries and you can't self-contain your own energy production. Yeah, and for me, I would stress, yeah, the solar and wind thing, you know, with all the existing subsidies has been so massively damaging. And the idea of continuing it is so...

Let's talk about the Senate. So, you know, I've shared with this a little bit publicly and I'll talk about a little bit more now. You know, my approach to the Senate is totally go on offense. It's just keep telling the truth. And but I'll give you what the other side is saying, because I think I think I've identified their position comes down to three core myths.

And everything else they say, I mean, the amount of false arguments that I'm getting from these lobbyists is just even astonishing to me. And I've dealt with a lot of crazy people, but it's just so many disingenuous and misleading arguments. But I think they basically have three arguments. One is that subsidizing solar and wind has led to great economic results. That's one. Number two is the House bill cuts all solar and wind subsidies.

And then three is by cutting all solar and wind subsidies, the House bill will cause great economic destruction. So these subsidies have been amazing. We're cutting them all. And so the world is going to end. And the truth is subsidizing solar and wind has led to catastrophic results. The House bill only cuts those subsidies for new projects, not existing ones, unfortunately. And by cutting new solar and wind subsidies, the House bill does a lot of good, but the Senate can do far more good if it cuts all of them.

as I've organized every imaginable argument by sharing this with any congressman who wants to know, and I'll post it publicly, every argument they have is one of these three fallacies. And it's so important right now to get out that truth and to make clear the House bill did not go far enough. The other thing that I've been focused on is the nuclear issue. Because I think what happens is nuclear is entangled

with solar and wind through what are called the PTC and ITC, which under the IRA became, quote, tech neutral. And they still are overwhelmingly for wind and solar, but because nuclear derives some benefit from them, all these, quote, pro-progress people, even the pro-solar and wind people being like, oh my gosh, we're going to destroy nuclear if we get rid of the PTC and ITC.

But the issue is if nuclear is improperly entangled with solar and wind, let's disentangle it because nuclear is not very expensive compared to these things. And nuclear actually has some argument for support given how victimized it is by bad regulation and how you have a lot of new potentially promising dispatchable technology. So what I've been advocating is, hey,

Here's what you should do with nuclear. Make any of the tax credits only apply to dispatchable sources. So they actually need to be on demand, both for new projects and existing projects. Guess what? We then can save about $200 billion in existing solar and wind subsidies because some of the other $400 billion are for other things like carbon capture and stuff like that, which I also want to kill, but in terms of the easiest stuff to kill.

We can get rid of those, and then you can easily finance nuclear. So what I've been drafting and helping people with is, hey, here's a way nuclear can be even better off, and we can kill more of the solar and wind stuff that's destructive and unjustified, the subsidies, I should say.

and thus we can have a better budgetary outcome and a better nuclear outcome and thus a much better grid outcome. But all of this depends on recognizing the solar and wind subsidies have been an absolute disaster and none of them are justified. So curious if you guys have any thoughts or additions to that. Yeah, Alex, I just wanted to say one thing, and I know we're probably getting towards the tail end of the podcast. I would just say,

One, and you won't want to do this, but I'm going to do it. You deserve enormous praise for being engaged in this and being a voice that helped us enormously with logic and reason, both your previous work and your work through this process and being a part of the conversations. Josh worked very hard to, and to encourage that you would be a part of conversations on the Hill as did I, but Josh was a big champion of making sure that you had a voice there. And, and,

I want to make sure that everybody listening to this knows how important it was, I mean, and how important it is and how important it will be through the Senate process. And look, I think what you just said is really important for the entire world to level set and understand about what we're facing and that putting that out there logically and with truth has level set the field. And on the nuclear point, I would just close by saying, yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And in fact, we had some jaws drop. I don't remember if this Josh went,

They're talking about the subsidies, right? Because we're fiscal hawks and we're trying to save every dollar. They sometimes get wrapped around the axle that we want to cut every single thing. I said, just take the nuclear out. Don't make them be a part of the deal. If the subsidies need to flow for them, let them flow for the nuclear because we need to offset all of the

you know, last 50 years of stupid under, you know, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and all of the ridiculous regulations that have limited our ability to have that reliable power at our fingertips. I'm a pro-gas guy, Texan, but I'm pro-nuclear, and you've been one of the leading voices on nuclear. So it was critically important that we make that point, and thanks for your help through this whole process. Thank you. And I'll just say that it's – I've been –

I want to give other people this as an example. I've been surprised in working with politicians just how much it helps them.

to be of course useful you know that that we can provide good information and ideas very quickly and at high quality but the other thing is trusted just that the fact that i've been saying the same things for 18 years and i say the same thing no matter who you are like that really matters to politicians and i just want to highlight that because people don't think that's true they think that oh the way to get to politicians to give them a lot of money like you guys know like i

I mean, Chip and I go way back. I never endorse anybody. I don't endorse parties. I don't give money. We've never talked about money. And people are always like, oh, you have to do that to play the game. And I'm like, I'm not playing that game. I'm playing the game of if you want to fight for energy freedom, I will tell you the truth.

and give you all the help I can. And that's it. And that's worked amazingly well strategically. And I just want to tell that to other people so maybe they can do the same instead of treating politicians as corrupt. And Alex, Josh mentioned earlier, Paul Winfrey and Matt Dickerson and Brian Blaze, they were really important on this issue, predominantly heavily Medicaid, but this issue too, because they were helping us level set and be honest about the budget. They do something similar as you do.

Right. They've got organizations that are donor funded, that they go out and go advocate for good budget policy, good health care policy. And so they were reliable, you know, donors.

assets for us during this fight, both heavily on health care and Medicaid, but the overall spending levels and how to deal with the budget fight, including the Inflation Reduction Act. So we need people like that who are committed to the cause. And for all the people out there who support Alex and support other organizations like that, we need them. Sorry, Josh, I didn't mean to jump in.

front of you. Let me just say one thing about the support though. Like one thing I've always set up, I mean, I have the benefit of being an author and speaker, so I can make my money on the free market. So I don't need donor support for stuff, but I do ask for a lot of it because it amplifies my ability to have an impact. But I'd say one other lesson I found is if you can set up your donor situation so that they have zero editorial control over anything you say. And so everyone knows you represent yourself. You don't represent anyone. You don't represent any interest. That's going to help with your credibility. And yeah,

We should wrap up with this, but Josh, I'll give you the final word on what we should be doing and what the American people should know with regard to the Senate. Because again, this is far from over. I think the lobbyists for solar and wind got surprised, but they're going nuts right now. And their enthusiasm to keep them is only matched by my enthusiasm to destroy them.

say alex i know you're going to be putting out information make sure that people that are going to be talking to their united states senator are armed with the truth not the misinformation that the wind and solar lobby is going to be communicating with them they're going to be amplifying uh prospective jobs and prospective projects that they will not be based 100 truth it will be based in uh projections of what they might have done and

And so I would say follow sources like you that are trusted and then advocate to your United States Senator and to the White House to make sure that truth wins out in this. And that we have relative to the mandate that we end the green new scam that is putting our national security and U.S. jobs at risk.

Thanks, guys. Well, that's a great place to end the podcast. We're actually going to do a little Q&A with some local people right after this, but I'll wrap up the podcast. Hi, everyone. This has been Power Hour. Thanks so much to my guests, Josh Burkine and Chip Roy. Thanks for what you did in this process, and let's fight going forward.