Biden Administration spending climate cash quickly as Trump threatens cancel it

If Donald Trump wins the Nov. 5 presidential election, he has promised to cancel all funds that have not been spent from President Joe Biden’s climate law.

Biden administration officials say that the majority of the grants will have been spent by January when a new President takes office. Targeting what is left would be a huge legal challenge.

Biden Administration officials say that the administration has so far awarded $90 billion to climate, clean-energy, and other projects under the 2022 inflation reduction act. This is 70% of the roughly $120 billion of climate grant money available and more than 80% of the amount made available by the law before 2025.

In the next few months, another $15 billion may be awarded.

Natalie Quillian, White House Deputy chief of staff, said that the administration was distributing funds "as swiftly and equitably" as possible.

She said that Trump's re-election would make it difficult to freeze the un-spent funds, as well as the tax credits worth billions of dollars available each year under the law, for electric vehicles, wind farms, and solar plants.

Quillian stated that "no president is above law and the law here is clear: the executive branch has no authority to withhold funds because it disagrees with policies that Congress adopted."

Inflation Reduction Act, which is valued at more than $400 billion in total, is considered the biggest climate law ever passed by the United States. This figure includes grants, other expenditures to encourage clean energy deployment as well as tax incentives and credit.

Trump, who called climate change hoax in a speech focused on the economy, said that if elected, he would "rescind any funds not spent under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act".

The Republican ex-president is running against Biden’s vice president Kamala Harris. Harris, a Democrat, cast the tiebreaking vote to pass the legislation in the Senate.

House of Representatives speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from the House of Representatives, stated on Tuesday that if he and his party win control of Congress at the election, they would target the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the first hundred days.

The makeup of the new Congress following the elections will determine whether this is the case.

The U.S. House Republicans tried to repeal the law 42 different times but failed to gain enough votes.

Last month, Johnson was urged by 18 House Republicans to not target the law due to the investments that IRA subsides have brought to their districts.

Biden administration agencies that receive the most funding for climate-related IRA grants are told to move quickly with their grants.

The Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency for example, have said that they had already committed all or almost all of their IRA funding.

Interior Department said that it has awarded or made available almost $4.9 billion out of the $6.4 billion total Inflation Reduction Act funds.

Treasury Department has said that it has finished the rules on how to use major IRA tax credit for 22 out of 24 programs available and will finish the remaining ones this year.

Gillian Metzger is a law professor at Columbia University. She says that Trump would find it difficult to repurpose the money due to the protections of 1974 Impoundment Control Act. This law was passed in 1974 after President Richard Nixon seized funds to fund federal spending that he did not support.

She said, "These measures really limit the president's authority to do so." (Reporting and editing by Jonathan Oatis; Valerie Volcovici)

(source: Reuters)