By Valerie Volcovici
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump said he would withdraw all unspent funds from President Joe Biden’s climate bill if he wins the Nov. 5 presidential election.
But the vast majority of the grants will be spent by the time a new president takes office in January, and addressing what remains would be a huge legal challenge, Biden administration officials said.
The Biden administration has so far awarded $90 billion in grants to climate, clean energy and other projects under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, representing 70% of the roughly $120 billion in climate-focused grants from the law and more than 80% of what the law made available before 2025, administration officials said.
Another $15 billion could be awarded in the coming months.
The administration is distributing the money “as quickly and as equitably as we can,” White House deputy chief of staff Natalie Quillian told Reuters.
She added that the unspent funds — as well as the billions of dollars in tax credits available annually under law for things like electric vehicles, solar power plants and wind farms — would be difficult to freeze if Trump returns to power.
“No president is above the law, and the law here is quite clear: the executive branch does not have the authority to withhold appropriated funds just because it may disagree with policies Congress has enacted,” said Quillian.
The Inflation Reduction Act is being billed as the largest US climate bill in history, with a total value of more than $400 billion. That figure includes subsidies and other spending to encourage clean energy deployment, along with tax breaks and credits.
Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, said in an economy-focused speech on September 5 that he wants to revoke “all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act” if elected.
The Republican former president is running against Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat who cast the deciding vote in the Senate to pass the bill.
Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson said Tuesday that if his party wins control of Congress on Election Day, they will focus on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) for the first 100 days.
Whether that is likely depends on the composition of the next Congress after the elections.
Republicans in the US House of Representatives have tried 42 times to repeal the law in whole or in part, but have failed to get enough votes.
Last month, 18 Republicans in the House of Representatives sent a letter to Johnson urging him not to target the bill because of the investments that IRA grants have attracted to their districts.
Biden administration agencies with the most climate-related IRA funding told Reuters they are moving quickly on their grants.
For example, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency said they had already obligated all, or nearly all, of the IRA-related funding.
The Interior Department, meanwhile, said it had awarded or made available nearly $4.9 billion of the $6.4 billion in total Inflation Reduction Act funding.
The Treasury Department, meanwhile, said it has completed the rules for using large IRA tax credits for 22 of the 24 available programs and plans to finalize the rest this year.
According to Gillian Metzger, a law professor at Columbia University, Trump would have a hard time using that money again thanks to protections in the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which was passed after President Richard Nixon seized money for federal expenditures where he opposed for policy reasons.
“These measures really limit the authority of presidents to do this,” she said.
