After the House Rules Committee scheduled the floor debate on the legislation, the concessions were made after 2 a.m.
House GOP leaders caved in the middle of the night to demands for changes to their debt limit measure, baking in three pages of tweaks as they scramble to whip the package.
The concessions came after 2 a.m., as the House Rules Committee teed up floor debate on the legislation Speaker Kevin McCarthy has vowed to pass this week to stake House Republicans’ opening offer for raising the nation’s borrowing cap to save the U.S. from defaulting on its $31.4 trillion in debt this summer.
After McCarthy and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) insisted no changes would be made to appease holdouts threatening to oppose the bill, the Republican leaders ultimately acquiesced to major alterations to the text.
The changes would:
- Rescind large swaths of the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law last summer, including:
— $1 billion to boost the adoption of building codes for energy-efficient construction.
— $5 billion for loans to back energy infrastructure projects.
— $1.9 billion in grants to improve transportation access to neighborhoods.
— $200 million for National Park System maintenance projects.
— $5 billion in grants for reducing climate pollution. - Tighten rules for social welfare programs a year earlier. Instead of starting those stricter guidelines in the fall of next year, constraints would kick in come October of this year for the TANF program that sends monthly payments to low-income families with children.
- Beginning in September, bar states from saving up unused exemptions under the SNAP food assistance program.
- Make an exception to allow some tax credits to continue for renewable energy. The bill would still repeal the credits going forward. But tax perks would be allowed for those who locked in binding contracts or made concrete investments for sustainable aviation fuel or for producing other “clean” fuel before April 19.
- Nix changes the bill would make to incentives for carbon oxide sequestration, biodiesel, renewable diesel and second generation biofuel.
Democratic pushback: Even before daybreak, Democrats began slamming GOP leaders for a lack of transparency. Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, accused Republicans of hastily cementing a “disgraceful amendment that materialized from your midnight séance.”
