Reuters reports that Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has rejected the Republican-led effort to overturn existing federal regulations on tailpipe emissions. This is one of the goals of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed the House of Representatives, is currently being debated in the Senate, and could reach the desk of President Trump in the coming weeks.
The objection concerns the large-scale overturning of regulations imposed by the Biden administration using the budget reconciliation process. This process allows for the passage of a bill with a simple majority vote in the Senate rather than 60 votes. The Senate currently comprises 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and two Independents.
The Senate Parliamentarian is not a member of the U.S. Senate. The role is to be an official advisor to the Senate who interprets the rules and procedures and raises alarms when processes are being violated. It’s strictly a nonpartisan role, and MacDonough has a track record of frustrating the goals of both Democrats and Republicans since she began in her role in 2012.
The part of the bill being disputed would return EPA tailpipe emissions regulations to 2020 standards. It would limit the EPA’s emissions standards to 204 grams of pollutants per mile for cars and 284 grams per mile for light trucks. The Biden administration set much more aggressive emissions standards, 170 grams per mile for model year 2027 and 85 grams per mile for model year 2032. The Senate Parliamentarian’s objection states that this overturning requires a 60-vote passage, while the rest of the tax and spending package can be pushed through via budget reconciliation.
The Biden admin’s goal was to accelerate America’s transition to electric vehicles. Throughout Biden’s term, his administration maintained a goal of 50 percent of new light-duty vehicles sold in the U.S. being all-electric by 2035. The proposed relaxing of federal emissions standards by the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans aligns with an industry-wide slowdown in EV development. EV market share in the U.S. recently hit 10 percent, with Chevy being the nation’s fastest-growing EV brand, but demand for electric vehicles still lags behind what many industry analysts anticipated in recent years.
Comments
Move over Karen, people are sick and tired of this crap.
Ain’t that the truth!
No one is sick of clean air.
California is moving to EVs as part of their mandate to reduce (eliminate?) sources of air pollution. Other states are joining with California’s standard for the same reason. EVs don’t pollute the air in our cities and towns. They don’t pollute our atmosphere. These are clear health benefits to every state and town. Republicans are just supporting the Oil companies and their hidden actions to kept us buying their gas and oil and polluting our air and water. And harming our kids and ourselves.
Trump’ s EPA director can rip Brandon’s virtue signaling mandate through the rule making process. It will take a bit longer than a straight vote, but it will get done. Also the budget bill is eliminating fines for automakers for not meeting the mandate.
Go get Em tigger!
GRRRR….
I am not a Trump fan but I sincerely hope that the Democrats lose on this one. The charging network isn’t there.
Our power grid isn’t there….but they are also trying to shut down coal and gas generators while hiding nuclear reactors behind miles of red tape. On top of that we have all these data centers eating up spare capacity in my area.
Democrats need to figure out how to push their agenda without penalizing everyone for just living their lives. The taxpayers will need the charge network that Biden’s BBB plan promised but never delivered. We need scalable, affordable electricity generators that don’t consume vast amount of land used to grow food or to build houses if we really want to make life affordable. A lot of the costs of new cars and energy are from regulatory pressure. We have got to chill out with that – our economy depends on reliable energy and affordable transportation.
Roll back the burdensome regs on ICEs. They are getting more expensive and less reliable and we still aren’t rushing to buy EVs because our infrastructure does not support it.
If we want to shovel money into something- do something about highway congestion and our horrific passenger rail network.
You’re right there; Trump’s EPA will have to go through a rule making process to make changes. But EPA will have to include a review of scientific facts to defend why they believe that reducing the standards will meet the Clean Air Act requirements to protect public health. And it’s a public process, so they have to take public comments as well. Long process. And if they try and short cut it, the courts will throw any proposed change out and they start again. And if EPA takes a long time to review but the data doesn’t support changing the standards, it will go back to the courts to review before any action occurs. Auto companies won’t be waiting to see what happens. They’ll spend on engineering to develop more EVs anyway. EVs are here and they are the future. Only the Oil companies are holding us back.
Like we seen with Biden, the EPA has great latitude with what they can do with numbers. Directors are appointed by the sitting president based on their political philosophies. Biden appointed a bunch of far leftists and Trump appointed conservatives. The public comment period is a joke and a formality. Do you really think they care what the public thinks? The EPA rolled back unfeasible standards before and they will again.
f*** the dems for this.
If the government wants us all in EV’s, they better figure out where all the taxpayer cash went for charging stations. Their rollout was delayed for years and then very underwhelming.
Our charge network is still terrible.
I want nothing to do with EV’s until that changes.
The cash was “allocated” not spent. It takes time to plan and permit and things were finally beginning construction when the felon regime illegally tried to block funds and end contracts.
Me too, I will not buy an electric but I might had consider an hybrid. How come GM did not go for a transition period from gas to hybrid vehicules then to hybrid to full electric??? Gee did they miss the boat when you see almost all other companies offering hybrids. And the meantime, the network of electric charging stations would have outgrown gas station.
Look for the sake of all Americans and the automakers you need to roll this back.
The more efficient the cars get the more expensive and complicated they get. Most can no longer afford a new car.
Add to this the reliability of many cars are declining due to the emissions and other cost saving measures the companies do to make prices more affordable to off set the emissions.
The truth is the emissions of 2020 were just a fraction of what they once were. We at this point need to off set that small gain that is left for the sake of the American pocket book. We are not like we used to be and we are very clean today.
As for oil we are not going to run out tomorrow. And EV is here to stay but we do not need to force it as the only choice. Let it improve and over time let the public accept it on its own merit and not force it on the public. I expect in the next decade it will continue to improve and earn its own fan base.
But to force an unperfected product at a much higher cost on me I will reject it every time.
Let the public chose.
If this unelected ‘advisor’ to the Srnate puts the stop on this, then the EPA should move quickly to work on rolling back the regulation.
It’s a nonpartisan position. The President of the Senate can choose to ignore the parliamentarian’s advice, but the role is there for a reason.
And you are correct, it is up to the EPA to determine emission regulations, not the congressional budget.
We need to roll back they liberals up there.
“ It would limit the EPA’s emissions standards to 204 grams of pollutants per mile for cars and 284 grams per mile for light trucks”
Important to note that “light trucks” here also means anything the EPA deems as an “SUV”. Which they have been rolling over to auto industry marketers for awhile on. The Biden era rules finally recognized that a RAV4 or an Equinox is actually a passenger vehicle and not a “light truck” and should follow the same emissions rules.
This ruling is unsurprising, given that vehicle emission standards have nothing to do with the federal budget. The parliamentarian is simply applying the Byrd Rule to the budget bill.
We can not use but a few items out side the house that either a EV or battery power with out headaches
We can’t even use a battery power weed Wacker without half dozen batteries
farms are not the place for EV power vehicles or equipment
cordless drills & flash lights is about it
For all y’all complaining, you should be happy for better efficiency standards. Stricter standards leads to lower demand for oil and gas which leads to lower prices for ICE drivers.
ICE drivers should also be on the side of EV adoption as it too would lower demand for gas, and therefor decreasing your price at the pump.
If anything, they need to roll them back to 2019 to get rid of the auto start stop. That’s making the air dirtier. Engines aren’t cleaner starting and stopping all the time
The Dummycrat terror cannot end soon enough..