by Steve Milloy, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow and Junkscience.com Founder
As appearing on Blaze Media
Trump’s bill survives the House, yet some Republicans still cling to Biden’s climate cash. If they block it now, they stand to lose big in the 2026 midterms.
Germany’s first chancellor Otto von Bismarck famously said, “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.” That description fits President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act — with one major exception.
Unlike most legislation, the OBBB deserves a close look. But the media would rather focus on headline fodder like the SALT deduction fight and proposed Medicaid work requirements. What the media has mostly ignored is far more significant: the dismantling of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act’s climate spending, or what Trump rightly calls the “Green New Scam.”
Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) recently claimed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the OBBB rolls back “the most reckless parts of the engorged climate spending,” reclaiming $6.5 billion in unspent funds. But that figure barely scratches the surface.
Goldman Sachs estimated the total value of the Inflation Reduction Act’s climate spending at a whopping $1.2 trillion. According to Grok, X’s artificial intelligence tool, the initial OBBB version would have left most of it intact.
Roughly $140 billion of that $1.2 trillion had already been spent in 2024 — much of it used to grease the palms of red-state politicians, as I’ve discussed elsewhere. Another $140 billion has been committed but not yet disbursed. The Trump administration is currently fighting in court to block that money from being spent.
