Op-Ed: George David Banks: The mirage of the GOP’s “Green Wall” and its predictable disappearance
House Republican moves to gut clean energy tax credits in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” stunned many renewable and low-carbon technology advocates. In the months leading up to the vote, hundreds of companies, trade groups, and advocacy organizations mounted an aggressive lobbying campaign calling on Republicans to defend the energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). They organized events, staged fly-ins, flooded offices with constituent calls and letters, and ran targeted ads with a primary goal — to build a Republican “Green Wall” composed of a bloc of lawmakers to block any effort to curtail the credits.
K Street celebrated what they saw as the “Green Wall” completion, marked by two Dear Colleague letters calling to back the provisions — one headed by Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R., N.Y.) and twenty other House Members and the other led by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) and three of her colleagues. Letters, however, rarely predict what will happen on the floor. In the D.C. swamp, people tend to see what they want to see and say what their patrons wish to hear.
The letters created a mirage. None of Garbarino’s squad opposed the bill. They unsurprisingly prioritized other issues: extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, raising the SALT cap, securing Medicaid funding, or advancing border or defense spending. With the IRA’s energy tax credits projected to cost between $663 billion and $1.2 trillion by 2035, they became a prime target for deficit hawks. And with the IRA branded by critics as the “Green New Scam,” defending it was increasingly politically toxic. In high-stakes negotiations with razor-thin margins, lawmakers typically get one real ask — clean energy subsidies weren’t it.
IRA advocates also unwittingly had a messaging problem. They tried a rebrand using “America First” marketing. The campaign’s most strained effort was to fold IRA tax credits into President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda and revive the “all-of-the-above” strategy — an outdated GOP slogan originally used to counter President Barack Obama’s anti-fossil fuel policies. But for the Trump team and much of the Republican conference, energy dominance doesn’t include subsidies they view as creating Chinese jobs, nor do they support taxpayer funding for technologies viewed as unreliable or overly dependent on foreign supply chains.
Another mistaken assumption was that Republicans could back the credits without addressing their concerns or underlying source of opposition. While China hawks are not necessarily opposed to federal incentives for clean energy, they are emphatic about reshoring as quickly as possible — in part because they view conflict as probable. Yet, K Street has lobbied against “foreign entity of concern” requirements instead of acknowledging the national security risks and working with the GOP to shape effective safeguards.
In addition, IRA lobbyists argued that Republican lawmakers should support the credits simply because related projects landed in their districts. But this ignored a central GOP critique — that the IRA is a bloated green subsidy package with weak guardrails and questionable returns.
Republicans also argue the U.S. can’t outspend China in a subsidy arms race — and shouldn’t try. Strategic competition demands disciplined investments that strengthen American national security. For many in the GOP, that means prioritizing the defense industrial base, critical mineral sourcing and processing, and resilient supply chains. The argument that green energy subsidies are essential to economic competitiveness simply doesn’t hold water when those subsidies risk deepening dependence on China.
The Senate will leave its fingerprints on the Big Beautiful Bill, but like the House, it’s juggling a range of competing priorities. If clean energy advocates hope to win durable support in a divided Congress, they’ll need to change tactics. Rather than clinging to the IRA as written, the path forward lies in working with Republicans to advance their priorities — such as fiscal restraint and supply chain security. That means involving conservatives early, negotiating in good faith, and crafting reforms that go beyond branding exercises to address substantive concerns.
The failure to build a GOP “Green Wall” should be a wake-up call to K Street — enduring progress on clean energy will require meeting Republicans on their own terms and not simply converting them.
George David Banks is a former adviser on energy and environment policy to House Republicans and President Donald J. Trump
