Kean continues push for maintaining clean energy tax credits as GOP hashes out tax bill

With House Republicans in the midst of debating a colossal tax bill that they plan to try to pass through the reconciliation process this year, Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) is once again joining an effort to prevent those negotiations from including rollbacks of existing clean energy tax credits.

In a letter sent yesterday to House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, Kean and 20 of his fellow House Republicans – many of them from critical swing districts like Kean’s – urged their party’s tax writers to maintain clean energy investments enacted under former President Joe Biden, which they said “help support the United States’ position as a global energy leader.” The letter was first reported this morning by Politico.

“As energy demand continues to skyrocket, any modifications that inhibit our ability to deploy new energy production risk sparking an energy crisis in our country, resulting in drastically higher power bills for American families,” the letter states. “As our conference works to make energy prices more affordable, tax reforms that would raise energy costs for hard working Americans would be contrary to this goal.”

The push is not a new one; Kean signed onto a similar letter last year with 17 of his Republican colleagues But that letter came when Republicans only held control of the House, and thus any discussions of repealing Biden’s tax credits were moot anyways.

Now that the Senate and White House have flipped control to the GOP, Republican proposals could actually become law, raising the stakes for individual members to play hardball on their preferred policies. While the letter sent yesterday does not include any specific threats, Politico reported that some of its signatories are indeed hinting that they may oppose the GOP’s agenda if it includes a repeal of clean energy tax breaks.

Kean, too, is now a more prominent member of his conference than he was a few months ago. At the beginning of this session, Kean joined the Energy & Commerce Committee, a critical panel that will play a major role in hashing out the GOP’s eventual reconciliation bill.

And energy credits aren’t the only potential reconciliation sticking point on which Kean has staked out a position. The two-term congressman told the New Jersey Globe last week that he won’t support any tax package that doesn’t include raising or repealing the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap; he also said he wants to protect funding for Medicaid, though he did not make a similarly firm commitment to opposing legislation that cuts the colossal health care program.