--- title: How Republicans Learned to Love Green Jobs description: Taking a closer look at the debt ceiling bill and how it came about can tell us a lot about why the Inflation Reduction Act is so durable. canonical: https://time.com/6276841/debt-ceiling-climate-change-republicans-ira/ author: Justin Worland article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-05-03T20:00:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:14.583Z article:section: Climate og:title: How Republicans Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Green Jobs og:description: Looking at how the debt ceiling bill came about can tell us a lot about why the Inflation Reduction Act is so durable. og:url: https://time.com/6276841/debt-ceiling-climate-change-republicans-ira/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc297469e760f9e1d/698a3c90b21a9cab9150736a/kevin-mccarthy-debt-ceiling.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: kevin mccarthy debt ceiling og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Republicans Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Green Jobs twitter:description: Looking at how the debt ceiling bill came about can tell us a lot about why the Inflation Reduction Act is so durable. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc297469e760f9e1d/698a3c90b21a9cab9150736a/kevin-mccarthy-debt-ceiling.jpg?branch=production&width=2400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Republicans Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Green Jobs ## Video: Disney Sues Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Alleging Political Effort to Hurt Business [Watch (HLS stream): Disney Sues Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Alleging Political Effort to Hurt Business](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UV2ZYouM.m3u8) (0:48)  _Published 2023-04-27. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dismissed a lawsuit brought against him by Disney as without merit, saying it was politically motivated and that it was time for the beloved company to stop enjoying favorable treatment in his state._  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent May 3, 2023 8:00 PM UTC  US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, April 26 US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, April 26Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent May 3, 2023 8:00 PM UTC The [fight over the U.S. debt ceiling](https://time.com/6276760/president-biden-mccarthy-debt-ceiling/) is a major economic and political story. If Congress and the White House don’t come to an agreement in the coming weeks, the U.S. risks defaulting on its debt. This could spark an economic crisis in the short term and make the U.S. a less reliable creditor in the long term. All of this would have enormous political consequences for politicians in Washington. In theory, the debt ceiling fight might have big implications for U.S. climate policy, too. House Republicans passed legislation last week to repeal provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law, as a condition of raising the debt ceiling. But this legislation won’t become law. The Democratic-controlled Senate won’t pass it, and President Biden has already promised to veto it. Nonetheless, taking a closer look at the bill and how it came about can tell us a lot about why the IRA is so durable_._ **The final legislation** that passed the House last week was the result of a compromise between two factions: rank-and-file Republicans who wanted to eliminate IRA tax incentives entirely and a group of Republicans from the midwest who refused to support cuts to ethanol tax credits. --- ### More from TIME --- The ethanol industry, which makes biofuels from corn, is a significant employer in the midwest, and cutting government support for the industry would obviously harm the region’s economy. To win that faction’s support, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy kept the ethanol tax credits in the GOP’s proposed legislation to mostly gut IRA-related tax credits—which passed the House with only Republican votes, and now faces Senate approval. “As negotiations continue, we have made it crystal clear that we will not support any bill that eliminates any of these critical biofuels tax credits,” the midwestern representatives said in a statement after the bill passed. --- **_A version of this story also appears in the_** **Climate is Everything** **_newsletter. To sign up,_** [**_click here_**](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/newsletters/?newsletter%5Fname=climate&source=onsite)**_._** --- The [ethanol industry](https://time.com/collection-post/6149528/iowa-corn-methane-co2-pipelines/) has been around for decades and policies that support it have famously been an area of bipartisan agreement in midwestern states like Iowa. The IRA may soon place industries like wind and solar on a similar pedestal. The IRA’s tax incentives have spurred dozens of large investments in clean technology manufacturing projects across the country, many of which are in traditionally red areas. That’s especially the case in the southeastern U.S. Manufacturers have announced a total of seven new facilities in Georgia and South Carolina alone since the passage of the IRA, according to a [report](https://cleanpower.org/investing-in-america/) from the American Clean Power Association, an industry trade group. Indeed, some Republicans who ultimately supported the bill made clear their concern about repealing the clean energy provisions and said they supported the proposal as an opening gambit. “Every single one of us knows that \[April 30\] was nothing more than a mechanism to get Kevin \[McCarthy\] and the president to sit down and deal with an existential threat,” Fitzpatrick told [E&E News](https://www.eenews.net/articles/energy-spat-widens-partisan-divide-over-debt-ceiling/). “If there was a 1 percent chance of any of these provisions ever becoming law, a lot of us would have treated that very differently.” Supporters of clean energy condemned the legislation stridently. But they also don’t seem too fazed. The Senate is controlled by Democrats and would never pass such cuts. Even if it did, Biden has already promised to veto it. But, perhaps more importantly, as more green investment occurs in red districts and more new jobs are created there, the appeal of repealing the IRA will continue to fade. As Pete Maysmith, senior vice president of campaigns at the League of Conservation Voters, says: “The allure of these tax incentives is strong.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6276841/debt-ceiling-climate-change-republicans-ira/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6276841/debt-ceiling-climate-change-republicans-ira/"},"headline":"How Republicans Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Green Jobs","datePublished":"2023-05-03T20:00:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:51:14.583Z","description":"Taking a closer look at the debt ceiling bill and how it came about can tell us a lot about why the Inflation Reduction Act is so durable.","url":"https://time.com/6276841/debt-ceiling-climate-change-republicans-ira/","keywords":["policy","climate change","healthscienceclimate","Climate Is Everything"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc297469e760f9e1d/698a3c90b21a9cab9150736a/kevin-mccarthy-debt-ceiling.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Justin Worland","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/justin-worland/"}],"articleSection":"Climate","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc297469e760f9e1d/698a3c90b21a9cab9150736a/kevin-mccarthy-debt-ceiling.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"kevin mccarthy debt ceiling","caption":"Kevin McCarthy on Capitol Hill","creditText":"Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/climate/","name":"Climate"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/policy/","name":"policy"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6276841/debt-ceiling-climate-change-republicans-ira/","name":"How Republicans Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Green Jobs"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Disney Sues Florida Gov. 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