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john barrasso
'Heinrich Should Be Ashamed': Lone Senate Dem Helps GOP Deliver Big Pharma Win
The provision, part of the Senate budget bill, was described as "a blatant giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry that would keep drug prices high for patients while draining $5 billion in taxpayer dollars."
Jul 01, 2025
The deep-pocketed and powerful pharmaceutical industry notched a significant victory on Monday when the Senate parliamentarian ruled that a bill described by critics as a handout to drug corporations can be included in the Republican reconciliation package, which could become law as soon as this week.
The legislation, titled the Optimizing Research Progress Hope and New (ORPHAN) Cures Act, would exempt drugs that treat more than one rare disease from Medicare's drug-price negotiation program, allowing pharmaceutical companies to charge exorbitant prices for life-saving medications in a purported effort to encourage innovation. (Medications developed to treat rare diseases are known as "orphan drugs.")
The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen observed that if the legislation were already in effect, Medicare "would have been barred from negotiating lower prices for important treatments like cancer drugs Imbruvica, Calquence, and Pomalyst."
Among the bill's leading supporters is Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), whose spokesperson announced the parliamentarian's decision to allow the measure in the reconciliation package after previously advising that it be excluded. Heinrich is listed as the legislation's only co-sponsor in the Senate, alongside lead sponsor Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).
"Sen. Heinrich should be ashamed of prioritizing drug corporation profits over lower medicine prices for seniors and people with disabilities," Steve Knievel, access to medicines advocate at Public Citizen, said in a statement Monday. "Patients and consumers breathed a sigh of relief when the Senate parliamentarian stripped the proposal from Republicans' Big Ugly Betrayal, so it comes as a gut punch to hear that Sen. Heinrich welcomed the reversal and continued to champion a proposal that will transfer billions from taxpayers to Big Pharma."
"People across the country are demanding lower drug prices and for Medicare drug price negotiations to be expanded, not restricted," Knievel added. "Sen. Heinrich should apologize to his constituents and start listening to them instead of drug corporation lobbyists."
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a lobbying group whose members include pharmaceutical companies, has publicly endorsed and promoted the legislation, urging lawmakers to pass it "as soon as possible."
"This is a blatant giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry that would keep drug prices high for patients."
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the ORPHAN Cures Act would cost U.S. taxpayers around $5 billion over the next decade.
Merith Basey, executive director of Patients For Affordable Drugs Now, said that "patients are infuriated to see the Senate cave to Big Pharma by reviving the ORPHAN Cures Act at the eleventh hour."
"This is a blatant giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry that would keep drug prices high for patients while draining $5 billion in taxpayer dollars," said Basey. "We call on lawmakers to remove this unnecessary provision immediately and stand with an overwhelming majority of Americans who want the Medicare Negotiation program to go further. Medicare negotiation will deliver huge savings for seniors and taxpayers; this bill would undermine that progress."
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Big Oil Doesn't Just Want to Get Rich Wrecking the Climate—They Want Lower Taxes Too
"If this polluter handout is snuck into the GOP tax bill, then cuts to Medicaid and food stamps could well pay for another giveaway to Big Oil," said the co-author of a new report. "That's obscene."
Mar 24, 2025
Having helped install the most fossil fuel-friendly administration of the climate awareness era, Big Oil and their Republican boosters in Congress are now setting their sights on undermining a tax enacted by during the tenure of former President Joe Biden as part of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act.
Alan Zibel, research director at the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen, and Lukas Shankar-Ross, deputy director of Friends of the Earth's Climate and Energy Justice Program, noted in a report published Monday that Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who chairs the Senate Ethics Committee, earlier this year introduced industry-backed legislation, the Promoting Domestic Energy Production Act, for possible inclusion in Republicans' proposed $4.5 trillion tax giveaway to corporations and the ultrawealthy.
As Common Dreams reported in January, the fossil fuel industry spent an estimated $445 million during the 2024 election cycle to elect President Donald Trump and other GOP candidates who serve their climate-wrecking interests, and it expects much in return.
"Domestic oil and gas companies, including from Lankford's home state of Oklahoma, have warned their investors about the corporate alternative minimum tax," Zibel and Shankar-Ross wrote. "The industry could soon be rewarded with specially tailored tax relief courtesy of their Republican political allies."
As the report explains:
Here's how the tax scheme works: In August 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which made historic climate investments. To help pay for new spending, the bill included a set of corporate tax increases, the largest of which was the $222 billion corporate alternative minimum tax. This tax is meant to prevent corporations that deliver massive profits to investors from paying nothing or nearly nothing in taxes because of corporate-friendly tax loopholes. Under the corporate minimum tax, if a company reports an average of at least $1 billion in annual income over three years, then it must pay 15% of that reported income in taxes, minus certain deductions.
The report highlights Republican efforts to eliminate the minimum tax, including via legislation introduced by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and endorsed by the American Petroleum Institute, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, National Mining Association, Western Energy Alliance, and industry lobbyists.
The bill introduced by Lankford would enable fossil fuel companies to skirt the minimum tax by allowing them to deduct "intangible" drilling costs, a tactic used as an effective subsidy for more than 120 years. Zibel and Shankar-Ross described the tax dodge as "the oldest and the largest fossil fuel subsidy on the books," and one which "allows all of the costs for drilling an oil or gas well to be deducted immediately in the year they are incurred."
"If individual taxpayers understood the magnitude of the extreme subsidies for Big Oil, they would be shocked."
"It is simply outrageous that the GOP is using its trifecta to create yet another fossil fuel subsidy," Shankar-Ross said in a statement, referring to Republicans' control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. "If this polluter handout is snuck into the GOP tax bill, then cuts to Medicaid and food stamps could well pay for another giveaway to Big Oil. That's obscene."
Zibel asserted that "oil and gas companies are using the political influence they purchased to dodge paying even a minimal part of their fair share."
"If individual taxpayers understood the magnitude of the extreme subsidies for Big Oil, they would be shocked," he added. "The newest effort to bypass even the most modest of tax bills by the industry is shocking, but sadly not surprising."
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We Need A Real Path To Clean Energy, Not Dirty Fossil Fuel Deja Vu
Though the EPRA alleges to improve energy projects’ approval processes, it does so through fossil fuel racism, with giveaways to big oil and gas while hurting vulnerable communities and the environment.
Dec 06, 2024
To achieve a “clean energy revolution,” we cannot replicate the injustices of our current and past energy systems. As the next administration promises massive increases for fossil fuel projects and near total removals of environmental protections and agency functions, we must hold the line and set a standard for the future we need and deserve.
The Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 (EPRA) (S. 4753) introduced by Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), is being sold as a “necessary” and bipartisan path. But why does it feel so dirty, and so familiar?
Fossil Fuel Racism
We’ve seen this before. There have been multiple attempts to advance legislation that weakens environmental protections and sacrifices vulnerable communities to fast-track energy projects driven by fossil fuel interests. As foreshadowed during previous attempts in 2022, “The industry will keep trying these secretive, last minute efforts to push forward dirty deals.”
Unjust energy policies being marketed as for the “common good” is an age-old practice—as old as redlining, the industrial revolution, and earlier. Our energy systems have long been controlled by extractive, industry-driven forces, resulting in what is known as “fossil fuel racism.” Fossil fuel racism creates disproportionate impacts on people of color from the fossil fuel cycle and requires:
- Sacrifice zones, where the hazards of energy production and consumption are centered in disadvantaged communities;
- Disproportionate racialized impacts from climate change driven by fossil fuels; and
- Outsized industry influence in politics undercutting democratic spaces.
So what’s different about EPRA? Nothing. Not only does it contain goals straight out of Project 2025, the American Petroleum Institute and “two dozen energy companies and trade groups’” lobbying reports mention EPRA by name. Though the bill alleges to improve energy projects’ approval processes, it does so through fossil fuel racism, with giveaways to big oil and gas while hurting vulnerable communities and the environment. Here’s how:
1) Sacrifice Zones and Fossil Fuel Expansion
The Energy Permitting Reform Act continues to exploit environmental justice communities by reinforcing sacrifice zones, which include predominantly people of color and low income, by greenlighting fossil fuel projects. EPRA would undo the Biden administration’s pause on approving Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) export projects, overwhelmingly situated in these communities. EPRA would also dramatically shorten time for the Department of Energy (DOE) to perform environmental reviews and mandates automatic project approvals after 90 days, regardless of potential negative impacts. Additionally, modeled emissions reductions used to justify support for EPRA rely on continued use of environmental justice communities as sacrifice zones.
2) Climate Crisis and Public Health
People of color and low income disproportionately experience the worst climate crisis impacts. The modeling that claims the transmission pieces of EPRA would reduce greenhouse gas emissions are cherry-picked scenarios and assumptions, according to and underscored by over 100 scientists. Modeling also ignores localized pollution contributing to increasing health crises. The models’ reliance on greenhouse gas calculations overlooks realities for communities on the ground.
3) Industry Control and Democracy Broken
The bill undermines the ability of communities burdened by pollution to have a say regarding projects that threaten their health and environments. EPRA would reduce the time communities and Tribes have to challenge projects in court from six years to 150 days. It goes further to weaken the National Environmental Policy Act by voiding essential environmental impact assessments for fossil fuel projects.
Environmental Injustice and Community Impact
EPRA sets a dangerous precedent and has serious implications for frontline communities. Zulene Mayfield, of Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL) in Chester, Pennsylvania, is fighting a proposed LNG facility in her backyard. Chester—a majority working class, Black neighborhood—is already dealing with a health crisis from trash incinerators and sewage treatment facilities. Community members received no public notice about the project and were locked out of public hearings. With EPRA’s extreme project approval timeline coupled with an intentional lack of transparency, safeguards from hazardous projects are gone.
Hilton Kelley of Community In-Power and Development Association Incorporated (CIDA Inc.) in Port Arthur, Texas has also been fighting to free his community from fossil fuel racism. As a resident of the “cancer belt,” he is now dealing with two new LNG facilities in his neighborhood.
Voices against EPRA are rising with over 680 organizations opposing the bill. Environmental Justice leaders have spoken out including Richard Moore of Los Jardines Institute: “It [EPRA] is a stark reminder of the priorities of those who continue to put corporate profits above the health and well-being of our communities.”
Finding a Path to True Equitable Energy Reform
EPRA is built on a false policy dichotomy. We don't have to sacrifice environmental protections and communities to fast-track clean energy projects. There are other legislative proposals that are designed to protect communities with significant support, such as the A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice for All Act, which was written in partnership with environmental justice communities. This bill would cement key protections including cumulative impacts analysis; first, early, and ongoing engagement models; and civil rights and NEPA requirements. The Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act (CETA) similarly strengthens engagement through environmental justice liaisons facilitating relationships between project sponsors and communities.
Our communities are opportunity centers full of vision, solutions, and wisdom—not sacrifice zones. Our communities are worth investing in to achieve a just, sustainable energy future and address the climate crisis now, if decision-makers would only open their eyes.
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