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senate finance committee
Why Republicans Should Champion Clean Energy
When we really look underneath the surface, it’s clear that saving the Inflation Reduction Act clean energy tax credits, including the Domestic Content Bonus Credit, would advance Republicans’ own goals.
Jun 21, 2025
Last month, the Republican-led House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA, a comprehensive budget reconciliation bill that aims to lengthen major provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed during President Donald Trump’s first presidency, currently set to expire by the end of this year. Earlier this week, the Republican-led Senate Finance Committee introduced its version of the bill. Among several provisions intending to reduce the federal government’s deficit, the bill would majorly scale back clean energy tax credits instituted by the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022.
In doing so, the OBBBA would terminate the IRA’s Domestic Content Bonus Credit, which provides an additional 10% refund for clean energy projects that use American-made technology. Over the last three years, this IRA tax credit has boosted American manufacturing, created thousands of jobs here in the United States, and strengthened our domestic energy supply chain.
As our Senators from both sides of the aisle consider the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, those who believe in American economic growth and individual liberty should champion reversing course from the bill introduced by the Senate Finance Committee and keeping the IRA’s clean energy tax credits. The Domestic Content Bonus Credit in particular advances Republican values while enhancing America’s standing in the international energy market. This America-first, market-based policy generates American economic competition and innovation, while giving middle-class homeowners greater choice over their energy systems.
Rather than hurting the business of crucial American companies like Tandem PV, Republicans should champion clean energy because it aligns with core conservative principles.
Most new energy contributing to the American electricity grid is clean—including solar and wind—because of how cheap, fast, and naturally abundant these sources are. Indeed, in 2024 alone, 95% of new capacity to the American electricity grid came from clean energy. Because of this reality, the OBBBA’s impacts on federal clean energy incentives would reduce overall energy additions to the American electricity grid by about half by 2035, undermining American energy growth.
Meanwhile, China continues to maintain a near monopoly over solar energy technology, possessing an over 80% share of the international marketplace and currently on a growth trajectory. In 2023 alone, China installed more solar panels than America has over the course of its history and saw its solar panel exports increase by 38%. How did China come to lead the global solar energy technology market? In part, through government subsidies, including cheaper land for solar panel factories and low-interest loans to solar panel companies to expand these critical, nascent industries and spur their success. It is clear from a comparative perspective that the Domestic Content Bonus Credit is essential to strengthening American global energy leadership: In a market that China dominates, this tax credit helps American solar energy technology manufacturers compete.
I spoke to Scott Wharton, CEO of Tandem PV, an American solar energy technology company focusing on groundbreaking tandem perovskite solar panels, about 30% more efficient and powerful than the typical solar panel. With a perovskite layer 200 times thinner than silicon, the production of tandem perovskite solar panels requires only 10% of the energy needed to make conventional panels—a true testimony to American ingenuity. While in 2022 about 88% of U.S. solar panel shipments industry-wide were imports, primarily from Asia, Tandem PV announced plans in 2025 to construct a commercial-scale tandem perovskite solar panel manufacturing facility in the United States. Scott’s plans will increase American energy independence, growth, and innovation, enabling us to harness the abundant power of the Sun to power our future prosperity.
Scott said that Congress’s intention to scrap the Inflation Reduction Act clean energy tax credits would hurt his business, as American-made tandem perovskite solar energy technology would become less financially attractive to investors looking to support new capacity to the electrical grid. Given that the U.S. has developed the most advanced tandem perovskite technology globally, the current version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would adversely impact innovation, jobs, and growth in an emerging American industry. Moreover, Scott emphasized that the bill would undermine individual homeowners’ choice and liberty over their energy systems, as it would reduce their ability to own their energy production and increase their reliance on the greater energy grid.
It’s easy to get caught up in a game of partisan politics that puts emotional loyalty to party over rational best of interest of our country. When we really look underneath the surface, it’s clear that saving the Inflation Reduction Act clean energy tax credits, including the Domestic Content Bonus Credit, would advance Republicans’ own goals: long-term American economic and energy growth and international competitiveness through market-based solutions that promote innovation, create American jobs, and increase individual liberty. Rather than hurting the business of crucial American companies like Tandem PV, Republicans should champion clean energy because it aligns with core conservative principles. Let’s keep our clean energy tax credits—for America’s families, businesses, and future.
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Senate GOP Dumps Gasoline on 'Five-Alarm Fire' by Proposing Even Deeper Medicaid Cuts
"We're watching in real time as Senate Republicans line up to gut healthcare for millions of Americans in order to pay for tax cuts for themselves, their wealthy donors, and big businesses."
Jun 17, 2025
Senate Republicans on Monday proposed cutting Medicaid even more aggressively than their House colleagues to help offset the cost of trillions of dollars in tax breaks that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans.
The legislative text unveiled by the GOP-controlled Senate Finance Committee is a central component of the sprawling reconciliation package that Republicans are hoping to send to President Donald Trump's desk by next month.
The bill contains broader Medicaid work requirements than the House-passed legislation, expanding the ineffective and punitive mandates to low-income adults with children over the age of 14.
The Senate version would also sharply limit provider taxes that states use to fund their Medicaid programs. Edwin Park, a research professor at Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families, warned the provision would "devastate" state finances, particularly where lawmakers have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
"This will create huge budget holes over time, some in as little as two years, forcing states to make severe, highly damaging cuts," Park wrote in an analysis of the new legislation.
"Senate Republicans have made this cruel, heartless bill even worse as they continue on their endless pursuit to destroy our healthcare system."
Senate Republicans released the bill text less than two weeks after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House-passed reconciliation package would strip healthcare from nearly 11 million Americans over the next decade—a number that rises to 16 million when accounting for the GOP's refusal to renew ACA tax credits set to expire at the end of the year.
Even more people would lose healthcare if Republicans adopt the Senate plan, analysts and advocates warned. One recent study estimated that around 51,000 additional people across the U.S. would die unnecessarily each year due to large-scale health insurance losses caused by the GOP's proposals.
"It shocks the conscience that Senate Republican leaders saw the impacts of the House bill—16 million more people uninsured and millions losing help buying groceries, including families with children—and chose to double down," said Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Leslie Dach, chair of the advocacy group Protect Our Care, said in a statement that "this bill was already a five-alarm fire for American healthcare, and Senate Republicans have just poured gasoline on it."
"Contrary to what they've repeatedly promised, Republicans are torching Medicaid, ripping apart the Affordable Care Act, and leaving 16 million people without the critical care they need, all so Trump and the GOP can funnel more money to their billionaire and corporate friends," said Dach. "Seniors will be thrown out of nursing homes, people fighting cancer will be cut off from treatment, and rural hospitals will shutter. Senate Republicans have made this cruel, heartless bill even worse as they continue on their endless pursuit to destroy our healthcare system."
If Senate Republicans adopt the proposed changes, the House would have to pass the reconciliation bill again before it can reach Trump's desk. One House Republican, granted anonymity by Politico, said "hell no" in response to the Senate language pertaining to Medicaid provider taxes, a signal that the proposal is likely to face intraparty opposition.
But experts stressed that both the House and Senate versions of the reconciliation bill would be disastrous for low-income Americans and a boon for the rich.
"Now that we've seen Senate text, we can say for certain: Either the House or the Senate version would be the largest transfer from the poor to the rich in a single law in history," wrote Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress.
"Each would kick millions of people off their health insurance and each would rip food assistance away from millions of households," Kogan noted. "Each would increase deficits by trillions of dollars while making the poorest Americans poorer and making the richest Americans richer."
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Privatization Warnings Flash Red as Senate Republicans Advance Dr. Oz for Medicare Chief
"Given Dr. Oz's history of basically acting as a salesman for Medicare Advantage, putting him in charge of regulating these middlemen would be like letting the fox guard the henhhouse," said one Democratic senator.
Mar 25, 2025
The U.S. Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines Tuesday to advance the nomination of Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a move that drew widespread rebuke from consumer advocates and others who pointed to the celebrity surgeon's advocacy for private Medicare Advantage plans and other red flags.
The Finance Committee voted 14-13 to send Oz's nomination to a full Senate vote, with Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) hailing the former television talk show host's "years of experience as an acclaimed physician and public health advocate."
However, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the committee's ranking member, said he voted against Oz, explaining that the nominee "was given the chance to assure the American people that he would not be a rubber stamp for Republicans' plans to gut Medicaid" and raise Affordable Care Act premiums, but "at every turn, he failed the test."
"No senator should be fooled by the snake oil Oz is selling."
Wyden said he is "deeply concerned about Dr. Oz's history marketing Medicare Advantage plans," which, as frequent Common Dreams opinion contributor Thom Hartmann explained, are not part of Medicare but are a private health insurance "scam" created by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by then-President George W. Bush "as a way of routing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of for-profit insurance companies.
Wyden added, "Given Dr. Oz's history of basically acting as a salesman for Medicare Advantage, putting him in charge of regulating these middlemen would be like letting the fox guard the henhouse."
Last December, the watchdog Accountable.US revealed that Oz had invested as much as $56 million in three companies with wdirect CMS interests. In 2022, Oz's single biggest healthcare holding was up to $26 million in Sharecare, a digital health company he co-founded, and which became the exclusive in-home supplemental care program for 1.5 million Medicare Advantage customers. Nick Clemens, Oz's spokesperson on the Trump transition team, told USA TODAY last December that Oz sold his stake in Sharecare.
These and other apparent conflicts of interest prompted denunciations from progressive groups and Democratic lawmakers including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who also called attention to Oz's promotion of "quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain."
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said Tuesday: "Mehmet Oz is fundamentally unqualified for the position of administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and should never have been nominated for the position based on his conflicts of interest alone. The Senate Finance Committee should have unanimously rejected his confirmation."
Weissman continued:
Under Oz's watch, could strip crucial healthcare services through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act could be stripped from hundreds of millions of Americans. As he showed in his confirmation hearing, Oz would seek to further privatize Medicare, threatening access to care for tens of millions of Americans. Privatized Medicare Advantage plans deliver inferior care and cost taxpayers nearly $100 billion annually in excess costs.
He also refused to commit to push back on efforts to slash Medicaid, which would harm access to care for millions—especially the poor and vulnerable—just so Trump and [and his adviser Elon] Musk can give tax breaks to their billionaire buddies.
"We need a CMS administrator who believes in the importance of protecting crucial health programs like Medicare and Medicaid hand would put patients ahead of corporate profits," Weissman added. "We can only hope that sanity prevails when Oz comes for a vote before the full Senate. No senator should be fooled by the snake oil Oz is selling."
Tuesday's vote came as congressional Republicans seek to
slash $880 billion from programs overseen by the House Energy and Commerce Committee—which include Medicaid—in order to help pay for Trump's $4.5 trillion tax cut, which experts say would overwhelmingly benefit the ultrawealthy and corporations.
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