A provision in President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act connected with Green New Deal subsidies has been preventing a handful of Republicans from voting for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's debt ceiling bill, Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., told Newsmax on Wednesday.
Tenney told Newsmax's "Wake up America" that the House Republicans had voted unanimously against Biden's bill earlier this year, so negotiations are needed to get past that impasse.
However, changes were made overnight to remove a provision in the bill that would have ended a biofuels tax credit that had been part of climate change initiatives in the 2022 bill, reports Reuters. Some House Republicans, especially from states in the Midwest had been pushing back against the provision.
But still, McCarthy's plan, which could potentially reduce the deficit by trillions of dollars over the next decade, is "pretty modest and reasonable" and must be passed in response to the "runaway bill Biden created, with the problems with solar panels by giving subsidies to China so it doesn't have to pay tariffs, thereby hurting American solar manufacturers," said Tenney.
"Aren't we supposed to be bringing our supply chains back here?" she said. "Aren't we supposed to be less dependent on China?"
The House has also passed HR 1 to enrich energy production in the United States and make it energy independent again, said Tenney.
"It would bring down emissions because we would be using all forms of energy, whether it's solar, wind, nuclear, electricity powered by natural gas, which has done wonders for bringing down our emissions," she said. "We would be energy independent, which would bring down inflation, which would bring down this deficit that we're facing and this debt ceiling crisis that we're in."
Biden, who is refusing to negotiate on McCarthy's bill, said Tuesday that he couldn't believe he was quoting former President Donald Trump, who "even" said that he couldn't imagine anyone using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge, but Tenney said on Newsmax that Biden is also using it as a bargaining tool.
"He's the guy that was vice president the last time we used the debt ceiling to negotiate, and he knows this," she said. "Here's a guy who's been serving in the government for his entire working life, and this is a very good time for us to save the American people from this crisis that we face."
She added that "40% of our federal deficit" came while Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was the House speaker.
"She's no longer speaker, thank goodness, and we can now put a stop on the excess of spending," said Tenney. "It's hurting the American people every single day. We have to come up with some common-sense legislation. That's exactly what this debt ceiling negotiation under the Limit, Save, Grow Act is going to do."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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