Republicans shouldn’t do anything lame in the lame duck

Next year is looking good for Republicans at the federal level. Control of the House, Senate, and the White House is a recipe for legislative success, or at least the strong potential for success.

Whether Republicans will achieve basic legislative objectives like repealing the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) “green” subsidies remains to be seen. If they don’t get rid of all or most of those subsidies, then that would be a failure. Plain and simple.

In the meantime, Republicans have an easy path to legislative success for the remainder of 2024: don’t do anything lame in the lame duck.

As a general matter, a lame duck session is a bad time to try to pass any substantive policy. Legislation gets rushed, there is little opportunity for critical feedback and transparency, and mistakes get made. For Republicans, trying to get through any substantive legislation between now and 2025 makes zero sense. Whatever they can get now they can get in 2025, plus a lot more.

Republicans should say no to any type of omnibus spending bill. Instead, they should support a continuing resolution.

And even desired issues to address, like permitting reform, should not be pursued this year.

For Republicans and other legislators who want genuine permitting reform, including major changes to the National Environmental Policy Act and other environmental statutes, they will get even better reforms next year than this year. They also won’t need to accept flawed policies, such as those dealing with transmission issues.

Permitting reform doesn’t have to further federalize transmission policy or come at the expense of ratepayers who would be harmed by unfair pricing schemes. One bill, the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 in the Senate, presents some of these problems.

As my CEI colleague James Broughel explains:

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association has warned that the bill would “greatly expand federal control over co-ops, subjecting them to unacceptable regulation and driving up costs for consumers.” Major utilities like Duke Energy and Southern Company are also expressing reservations about increased federal authority over transmission planning.

Then there’s undermining the widely supported conservative goal of dismantling the IRA’s “green” subsidies. Passing transmission policy reform from this Senate bill would untap IRA subsidies by helping wind and solar connect to the grid. This would make it more difficult to get rid of the subsidies as special interests and legislators would become even more committed to defending the subsidies since the subsidy dollars would be flowing.

And if Republicans aren’t ultimately successful at getting rid of the IRA subsidies, they will have exacerbated the problems of the IRA if they did pass this flawed transmission policy.

In addition, if permitting legislation of some kind were passed in the lame duck, which would inevitably be weak reform, it would make it far more difficult to pass meaningful permitting reform next year. After all, Congress would have just addressed permitting reform, and this would be used as an excuse to not revisit the issue next year.

There are other potential problematic policies as well that Republicans should fight against during the lame duck. These include efforts by some legislators to pass the PROVE IT Act, legislation that would help establish a carbon tax on imports as well as a domestic carbon tax. Republicans didn’t get a mandate this past election to hurt Americans by increasing taxes and punishing energy use, but that’s exactly what this legislation would help to do.

Republican legislators should ensure that bad policy doesn’t get passed between now and the end of the year. Trying to get modest, or more likely weak reforms now doesn’t justify supporting bad policy or undermining their own goals in 2025. Nor should they undermine the incoming Trump administration as it seeks to make major policy changes.

Republican legislators should fight bad policy for the rest of the year, and remember, first, do no harm.