Senate GOP leadership could face resistance from moderate GOP senators regarding moving forward on a vote to overturn California’s de facto electric vehicle (EV) mandate.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso has said the Senate will vote this week on nixing Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) waivers allowing California to ban new gas-powered car sales by 2035 and mandate the sale of zero-emission trucks. Though many GOP senators have previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation they support terminating the waivers under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), key swing votes have stopped short of supporting the effort, citing procedural concerns about ignoring the Senate parliamentarian’s guidance on the waivers.
Senate Republicans are facing an early June deadline to reverse the three California waivers using the CRA process, which allows Congress to rescind recently-issued regulations within 60 legislative days by a simple majority vote. The three resolutions passed in the House with bipartisan support in early May.
Barrasso, the No. 2 Senate Republican, has repeatedly called on the Senate to overturn California’s “radical and impractical electric vehicle mandate” over the last several weeks. Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced on the Senate floor Tuesday that the Senate will take up all three California waivers this week. He and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chair Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia met with four GOP senators viewed as swing votes Monday night to discuss the California waivers, Politico first reported.
Given Senate Republicans’ 53-seat majority, Thune can afford to lose three GOP votes assuming all other Republicans vote “yes” and Vice President JD Vance casts a tie-breaking vote.
Collins and Murkowski, who attended the reported meeting, did not reveal to the DCNF if they would support proceeding with eliminating the California waivers under the CRA late Monday night. However, both offered their dislike for the vehicle emission rules with Murkowski observing that she was worried about the effects of California’s vehicle emission standards on Alaska.
“We’re working with everybody to make sure that Alaska is not going to be set up with those [vehicle emission rules],” Murkowski said.
Republican Utah Sen. John Curtis, another potential holdout, declined a brief interview to discuss his position on overturning the California waivers following the reported meeting.
Curtis previously told Semafor on May 11 that he is in favor of “undoing the waivers” but was still gathering information about the potential precedent of reversing the California vehicle emission rules under the CRA.
Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, a nonpartisan official appointed by former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, notably affirmed a Government Accountability Office decision in April that the California waivers are not subject to the CRA.
Senate Democrats, who all previously voted or campaigned to eliminate the filibuster, have argued that moving forward with a vote on overturning the waivers is tantamount to a backdoor elimination of the Senate procedural rule requiring the upper chamber to obtain 60 votes to pass most legislation.
Barrasso has countered that Senate Republicans have “every right” to reverse the Biden EPA waivers under the CRA because the Trump EPA sent the waivers to Congress as a rule.
“Historically an agency’s declaration that its action is a rule has never been questioned,” Barrasso wrote in the Wall Street Journal on May 6. “Thankfully the bureaucrats at the GAO can’t dictate the actions of the U.S. Senate or the will of the voters. It has said its opinion matters only when agencies don’t submit administrative actions to Congress that could be considered rules.”
The rules’ critics note the EPA waiver allowing California to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles within its borders and any state that chooses to comply effectively allows the Golden State to dictate national environmental policy regarding electric vehicles.
Eleven other states and the District of Columbia have chosen to comply with California’s de facto EV mandate thus far.
“Roughly 40% of Americans, or 133 million people, are subject to California’s EV mandate,” Barrasso noted in a letter to the Wall Street Journal. “The Golden State isn’t simply setting a stricter standard for itself; it’s setting a new national standard.”
Moreover, California’s outsized market share for vehicle sales in the United States could also force vehicle manufacturers to gradually phase out the sale of gas-powered cars across the country to comply with California and the other states’ stringent rules. General Motors, one of the largest sellers of EVs in the United States, is lobbying senators to support overturning the California waivers, according to a WSJ report published Saturday.
“Car makers don’t make one type of car for California and another type of car for the other 49 states,” senior Energy & Environment Legal Institute fellow and former Trump EPA transition team member Steve Milloy wrote in an op-ed for the DCNF Monday. “They make one type of car for all 50 states. Car makers don’t make one type of car for California and another type of car for the other 49 states. They make one type of car for all 50 states. There is genuine concern that California’s EV mandate would become a de facto national mandate.”
GOP senators have successfully reversed at least 14 Biden rules using the CRA since January.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the new development that the Senate is set to vote on the waivers.
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