Last-minute changes to Senate’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ stun clean energy industry (and Elon Musk)
The Senate is making a final push to advance President Trump’s signature legislation with a flurry of last-minute changes that stunned Elon Musk and the already besieged clean energy industry while offering new support for fossil fuels.
The controversy surrounding the bill’s energy approach is just one front in a frenzied final push with plenty of additional attention on the price tag after a new weekend tally found that bill has grown by nearly $1 trillion since the Senate took it up.
Meanwhile a grueling final Senate push to approve the package cleared a key procedural hurdle over the weekend, with consideration continuing and an amendment process expected to take up much of Monday before a final vote later Monday or perhaps Tuesday.
The energy provisions of the 900-plus page bill have come in for particular scrutiny after last minute changes phased out clean energy tax credits faster than expected and also added new taxes on wind and solar projects.
At the same time, new last minute inducements were unveiled for fossil fuels, including one classifying coal as a critical mineral when it comes to a government manufacturing credit.
“We’re doing coal,” Trump said in an interview released over the weekend on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” where he also called solar energy projects “ugly as hell.”
President Donald Trump during a news conference at the White House on Friday. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images) ·ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS via Getty Images
The mix left fossil fuel advocates celebrating and clean energy advocates slamming the bill at a new higher volume.
Tesla (TSLA) CEO Musk — who worked in the White House before his dramatic falling out with the president — was perhaps the loudest voice in the latter group. He issued a series of weekend posts calling the bill “utterly insane and destructive [with] handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”
The energy changes came as top-line costs of the deal remained a key point of contention. A nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tally released over the weekend showed the revised bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to the national debt.
Trump suggested Republicans look past the deficit implications in one of his weekend posts, urging passage as soon as possible saying he also wants to cut costs but adding to lawmakers: “REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected.”
He also made a case that White House projections of blockbuster economic growth (dismissed by many economists as fantastical) will make the math add up in the end.
The focus on energy comes after weeks of debate over Biden-era energy credits.
The initial Senate blueprint had offered a slower rollback of clean energy credits for things like solar panels and electric vehicles but last minute changes to the bill put it more in line with the harder line House version which seeks to eliminate the credits sooner.
Some provisions are even more immediate with the Senate version proposing to eliminate EV credits by September 30 of this year.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is seen in Sunday during a as lawmakers prepared throughout the weekend for a vote on their “Big Beautiful Bill.” (Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images) ·The Washington Post via Getty Images
And on top of that, a new tax was unveiled when the bill was released that would not just eliminate government help for renewable energy projects — but add a new cost for wind and solar projects completed after 2027 if a certain amount of supplies came from China.
The changes stunned many clean energy advocates — not just Musk — with a statement from the American Clean Power Association saying the effect would be to “strand hundreds of billions of dollars in current investments.”
What that could means for consumers down the road — some concluded — are higher utility bills as currently under construction AI data centers are set to increase electricity demand in the years ahead.
An analysis from the left-leaning Center for American Progress found that the bill would exacerbate existing upward pressure on utility prices, with Democratic Senator Brian Schatz adding “we are literally going to have not enough electricity because Trump is killing solar.”
Fossil fuels advocates meanwhile were largely ebullient at the last minute changes which saw existing fossil fuel focused provisions — around issues like permitting, lease sales, and methane emissions fees — joined by some new credits for these producers including for coal.
Senate Republicans say the bill will generate over $15 billion in new federal revenue through expanded oil, gas, and coal leasing with leaders with Senator John Barasso of Wyoming saying “America is an energy superpower and once again, we are going to act like it.”
President Donald Trump at a rally in Charleston, West Virginia in 2018 touting his support for coal. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) ·MANDEL NGAN via Getty Images
The bill is also set to be even more expensive after weeks of negotiations saw expensive compromises on issues like state and local tax (SALT) deductions, more generous business tax credits, and the adjustment of some cost savings around Medicaid.
The fullest accounting came over the weekend when the CBO estimated the Senate bill would increase the debt by nearly $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034.
The analysis also found that 11.8 million additional Americans would become uninsured by 2034 because of the health care provisions — an increase over the findings for the House-passed version that tallied that 10.9 million people would be without health coverage of that version passed.
The bill is projected to be even more expensive after things like interest costs are included, with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget protecting the current total tally as in the neighborhood of $3.5 to $4.2 trillion over the next decade.
“The debt impact could rise as high as $4.5 trillion if various rumored adjustments are made,” the group added of potential additional changes still to come.
The findings also come as Senate Republicans push forward on a budget gimmick that is set to hide $3.8 trillion in red ink using a “current policy baseline” that Democrats say violated Senate rules but appears set to proceed.
Either way the sky-high debt findings could imperil the bill politically, with two GOP senators already likely to vote no and others not yet saying they will back Trump’s effort to get this over the line in the coming hours.
The bill will also need to be approved by the House if the amended package advances and is then considered by a bloc of fiscal conservatives there who say they barely voted in May for that less expensive version.
One initial comment from the House Freedom Caucus was negative, with the group writing that the new tally was above “our agreed budget framework.”
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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