Democrats Descend Into Circular Firing Squad Over Biden-Era Electric Car Credits

Democrats hoping to win back Congress are split over whether to revive a Biden-era tax break for electric car buyers.

Rank-and-file House Democrats want to restore the $7,500 credit Republicans ended in 2025, but party leaders have not committed to it, Politico reported Monday. Democratic Ohio Rep. Greg Landsman introduced a bill Oct. 22 to double the credit to $15,000 and make it permanent, according to his office.

“The credit is not good policy,” Adam Michel, director of tax policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Michel said estimates of the Inflation Reduction Act-era credits indicate roughly seven in 10 recipients would have purchased an electric car without one.

He noted the Joint Committee on Taxation’s projection that repealing the old credit would save more than $19 billion in fiscal 2032, the last year of projected savings.

“If we simply double that figure and multiply it by the budget window, a credit twice as large as the one Congress repealed could cost about $380 billion over a decade, possibly more,” Michel said.

Ending the credit for buyers of new electric cars is projected to save the federal government $77.8 billion from fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2034, according to Joint Committee on Taxation estimates cited in a December 2025 Congressional Research Service report.

“Repealing it was the wrong decision,” Democratic California Rep. Mike Levin told Politico. “The whole thing is a giant self-own by this administration, and it does no good for the American auto industry.”

A Democratic adviser who works on energy, granted anonymity by Politico, said the credit has “become kind of synonymous with elite, liberal, coastal, kind of out-of-touch policy and politics.”