Johnson says approach to IRA repeal will be ‘between a scalpel and a

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) indicated this week that his approach to repealing the Democrats’ climate, tax, infrastructure and health care bill will be neither delicate and precise nor a total overhaul.

“It’ll be somewhere between a scalpel and a sledgehammer. We’ll see,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday.

The comment departs from his previous rhetoric on the future of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The Speaker told CNBC in September he wanted to take a “a scalpel and not a sledgehammer, because there’s a few provisions in there that have helped overall.”

It’s not entirely clear what the departure will mean in practice, if anything, for the legislation. The 2022 law, which received only Democratic votes, contains billions in tax credits for low-carbon energy sources, as well as new taxes on large corporations and provisions allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of some drugs.

Now that Republicans have control of the House, Senate and White House, they are looking to rein in the IRA — especially as they seek ways to pay for the tax cuts they want to enact.

However, it remains an open question whether or to what extent the law’s energy tax credits in particular will be modified. A group of 18 House Republicans last year wrote a letter to Johnson saying they want to preserve some of the credits.

And targeting any particular credit or energy source becomes difficult, especially with the House’s extremely slim majority.

Various GOP-held districts have projects that benefit from credits for solar, wind, biofuels, nuclear energy or electric vehicle manufacturing, and so it may be difficult to find credits that all of the Republican members agree to cut.

Mychael Schnell contributed.

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