Pay to play: Federal tax bill puts polluters over people
Congress is considering a barrage of budget cuts and policy changes that will impact everyone who cares about our clean air, clean water, public lands, and fighting climate change.
It’s a “pay to play” proposal for polluters. Multiple House committees have put forward a bill that would allow industries like methane gas, mining, or timber companies to pay to avoid environmental reviews, and buy immunity from legal challenges when they shortchange being transparent and accountable to communities.
Tell Congress to put our future over polluters.
These proposals are an egregious attempt to weaken bedrock environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act.
“The environmental review process is the greatest opportunity we have to stop the government and developers from pushing projects that would profit from stripping forests, polluting air and water, and threatening endangered species,” said Nat Mund.
“With this bill they’re buying a lock on the courthouse door and saying that money decides who gets to degrade our environment with no oversight.”
What’s in the bill?
- Polluters can “Pay to Play”: Logging, mining, drilling, and methane gas companies would be allowed to buy fast-tracked environmental reviews and pollute as they please.
- Blocking legal accountability: State and tribal governments would be robbed of their ability to push back on projects. The bill drastically limits judicial review –barring impacted communities and impacted landowners from their day in court.
- Gutting the IRA: The bill repeals tax credits that invested more than $20 billion in the Southeast, catalyzed $78 billion in private investment, and created almost half a million clean energy jobs. This investment brought new life to parts of rural America that were facing difficult economic challenges.
- Affordable energy and grid reliability: The bill also effectively hamstrings the ability of residents, local businesses, farmers, and churches to access more affordable, reliable clean energy. Communities across the Southeast benefit from low energy costs and are especially dependent on resilient grids in the aftermath of damaging storms.
- Environmental justice impacts: Drastic cuts to Medicaid will devastate health care access for millions of people in the same communities facing high health risks from toxic polluting facilities. And that pollution will be worse with weaker oversight proposed in the bill.
- Attacks on public lands: Congress aims to increase logging in our national forests, which will degrade popular recreational areas, imperil already rare plants and animals, and hurt communities and local businesses that rely on public lands.
For that, and many other reasons, we oppose this budget bill.
It would weaken the laws that protect clean air and water and attempts to combat climate change. It will strip the funding that was promised to communities for clean energy and new domestic manufacturing jobs.
It opens our public lands to more oil and gas leasing and coal mining.
In a short-sighted move, Republicans are leaning into as many ways as possible to repeal the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, with no regard to bedrock environmental laws or the huge investments that benefit Southern communities. They want to cut off clean energy investment right when it has the greatest potential to reduce costs for American families.
Where will we feel the impacts?
Congress is deciding the federal budget in DC, but the decisions they make now will have major long-term impacts on communities across the South.
Threats to public lands
- Congress is calling for a significant increase in logging on public lands, which poses severe threats to national forests across Southern Appalachia, including the 187,000 acres severely damaged by Hurricane Helene.
- The South is home to some of the nation’s most popular public lands, including the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Although national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges in the South generate billions of dollars in spending and support tens of thousands of jobs each year, Congress is looking to slash their funding. The massive, proposed budget cuts to the public lands agencies would mean less maintenance of these areas and fewer staff available to protect the experience for visitors and locals alike.
- House Republicans are also calling for dramatic increases in coal mining and oil and gas leasing on public lands plus reducing the royalties fossil fuel companies pay for extracting energy, meaning more damage to public lands with no public benefit.
Lost progress on U.S. manufacturing and jobs
If Congress follows through on the promise to repeal tax credits in this bill, Southern states will lose their competitive edge as leaders in clean tech and electric vehicle manufacturing. Rural communities could see backwards progress when it comes to much needed economic growth.
- Georgia is becoming a hub for EV and battery manufacturing, with companies like Hyundai, Rivian, and SK Battery America investing billions and creating thousands of jobs.
- North Carolina has one of the strongest solar industries in the country and is attracting investment in clean hydrogen, EV components, and grid modernization.
- South Carolina is seeing record growth in EV supply chain jobs, with BMW, Redwood Materials, and others establishing major new facilities.
- Tennessee is home to Ford’s BlueOval City and GM’s Ultium battery plant—turning the state into a manufacturing powerhouse for the EV revolution.
- Alabama is drawing new investment in clean vehicle production from Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz, making it a key player in the Southeast’s transition.
- Virginia is tapping into offshore wind and data center decarbonization, with Dominion Energy’s wind projects and major tech firms pushing clean power demand.
Climate change makes it vital to invest in clean energy now. If the administration wants to foster American-made energy, clean energy investments must continue as a crucial part of our energy vision, not just fossil fuels.
These investments are popular: 65% of Americans want to see more money going to wind, solar, and other clean sources of power. But we need your help to make sure Congress doesn’t forget that.
Our region deserves to have affordable access to energy and a reliable grid, and it’s a slap in the face to take away the investments that were making progress toward those goals.
Your voice matters
This might read like a polluters wish list, but we still have an opportunity to stop it. The margin is razor thin for these votes and changing a few lawmakers’ minds can make a huge difference.
This is a practical issue, not a partisan one. No one voted for dirty air and water: Most of these states are led by Republican governors and legislatures that are listening to what their communities want.
This legislation is sitting on the razor’s edge, any couple of members could stand up and make it stop. It’s imperative to act now.
Nat Mund, Director of Federal Affairs
The most powerful move you can make at this moment is speaking out and asking friends and family to speak out.
Tell Congress to put our future over polluters.