Senator Grassley Responds to Democrats’ Call for Energy Tax Credit Hearing

Earlier this week, 27 Senate Democrats sent Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) a letter urging him to schedule a hearing on proposals that would provide tax benefits for energy sources that are “crucial to combat climate change” since the Committee has yet to hold a hearing on tax extenders in the current Congress.

The proposals include “addressing the adoption of electric vehicles, expanding existing provisions to incorporate new technologies like energy storage or nascent industries like offshore wind, and sweeping rewrites of energy tax policy, such as the Clean Energy for America Act.” Click here to read the letter.

Senator Grassley fired back in a letter that criticized a lack of hearings on energy policy arguing that he has worked for energy tax incentive extensions, but that the Democrats insistence on a major expansion of the electric vehicle tax credit derailed broader efforts to extend or expand other energy incentives. Grassley said in this letter: “Repeated attempts were made to find a path forward to markup tax extenders and a handful of new associated energy provisions. Yet each time, the insistence on expanding the EV credit, primarily to the benefit of high-income earners, continually derailed these efforts. All this, despite the strong opposition to such an expansion on the Committee and in the Senate, which virtually assured that such a bill, even if it could be reported by the Committee, would have no path to success.”

From PMAA