Democrats Pivot To Affordability After Dumping Billions Into Climate Change Money Pit

Congressional Democrats are backpedaling on climate change and pivoting to an energy “affordability” message after years of promoting expensive climate policy, according to The Washington Post.

Though Democratic officials have long pushed expensive green energy projects in the name of combating climate change, they are now embracing affordability and reliability messaging, according to The Washington Post’s new analysis. In recent years, some Congressional Democrats supported the electric vehicle (EV) mandate, the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) under former President Joe Biden.

The Washington Post found that since the start of 2025, Democrats retreated from climate change messaging on social media, podcasts and speeches. Climate change was a hot topic for Democrats when they passed the IRA, with mentions of “climate change” and “climate” peaking in August 2022 and cratering in 2025, The Washington Post noted.

Holly Burke, vice president of communications at climate group, Evergreen Action told The Washington Post that she “see[s] the pivot to affordability not as a shift away from climate, but as a shift to meeting people where they’re at. We’re in a national cost-of-living crisis right now.”

Most Americans did not consider climate change to be a top policy priority heading into the 2024 election, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center poll, and President Donald Trump campaigned against Democrats’ energy policies, which he dubbed the “green new scam.”

Gas prices soared under Biden, hitting a record high of over $5 a gallon in June 2022, according to AAA data. Notably, Biden released about 180 million barrels throughout 2022 to bring down gas prices ahead of the November 2022 midterm elections, with some experts saying it could take “decades” to replenish the SPR.

Under Biden, Democrats passed the IRA, which they touted as a way to reduce inflation. The IRA routed billions to well-connected green groups, sought to boost EV purchases before Congress and Trump nuked the de facto EV mandate and subsidized solar projects in some of America’s least sunny places.

The Biden administration pushed for green energy infrastructure development through lucrative tax credits and subsidies contained in the IRA, which was initially projected to unlock nearly $400 billion worth of tax credits in 2022. However, Biden later admitted the IRA was a vehicle to advance his climate agenda, and several analyses projected its cost could soar to well above $1 trillion.

The Cato Institute projected in a March report that IRA tax credits could cost as much as $4.7 trillion by 2050, while a Goldman Sachs analysis noted that costs could exceed $1 trillion in the next 10 years. Although the IRA green energy credits were slashed by Congressional Republicans earlier this year, some energy policy experts previously told the DCNF that the credits would weaken America’s power grid and inflate electricity costs.

Several legacy media outlets have also shifted away from the climate narrative toward the rising electricity-cost angle, as some Democrats have publicly acknowledged the need for a new strategy and recognized that affordability is a winning message. Additionally, affordability and energy cost dialogue dominated Virginia and New Jersey’s gubernatorial elections and are expected to remain a key issue headed into the midterms.

Some Biden and Obama-era Democratic officials told Politico in June that their party “lost the culture war on climate” and that Democrats need to find a new strategy so that the issue is not a “niche leftist movement.”

“The way to victory is to talk about price,” Democratic Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said at a New York Times event in September. “You could talk about the planetary emergency and mitigation and adaptation, and you could throw in some environmental justice rhetoric, and by the time you’re done talking, people think you don’t care about them.”