Conservatives Oppose A Transition To Electric Vehicles... And We All Know Why

Yesterday, the House voted on Marco Rubio’s made in America legislation, S. J. Res. 38, that had already passed the Senate, 50-48, and will certainly be vetoed by Biden. The House passed it, 209-198, along mostly partisan lines. Two GOP rebels voted against it and two reactionary Blue Dogs— Jared Golden (ME) and Don Davis (NC), who often vote with Republicans— voted for it. The purpose of the bill is to upend a Biden administration rule meant to facilitate the proliferation of electric vehicle charging stations.

Kelsey Brugger reported that if Biden were to sign it, it “would scrap a Federal Highway Administration waiver from domestic sourcing requirements for EV chargers funded by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. ‘A waiver undercuts domestic investments and risks empowering foreign nations,’ said Rep. Sam Graves,” a Republican corporate tool from Missouri and chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “‘If the administration is going to continue to push for a massive transition to EVs, it should ensure and comply with Buy America requirements.’… Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington, the Transportation Committee’s top Democrat [also a corporate tool] defended the administration’s approach. ‘You need to give time to the private sector to prepare,’ he said. By scrapping the temporary Buy America waiver for charger parts like iron and steel, resolution critics say the resolution would also eliminate other domestic sourcing mandates. ‘If enacted, S.J. Res. 38 would weaken Buy America requirements by reverting to [the Federal Highway Administration’s] general waiver for manufactured products, allowing federal dollars— including $7.5 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law— to be spent on chargers made in competitor nations like the People’s Republic of China,’ the White House said in its veto threat last year. When asked about the claim in November, Rubio said, ‘Obviously, I don’t agree with their analysis… The bottom line is this,’ Rubio said on the Senate floor. ‘If we’re going to spend $5 billion of taxpayer money to build electric vehicle charging stations for the United States, it should be made by Americans, in America, using American products.’”

Sounds like a good argument, right? So why are all the bad guys on the side and all the good guys on the other side? For example. The Senators who crossed the aisle to vote for it are 4 in red states are face tough reelections this year: Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Jon Tester (MT), Sherrod Brown (OH) and Joe Manchin (WV), who has since decided to retire.

Brugger wrote that Biden “is pursuing his goal of having 50 percent of all new vehicle sales be electric by 2030. And the Energy and Transportation departments are spending billions of dollars to build 500,000 charging stations along interstate highways and within communities. White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi on Wednesday highlighted the administration’s ongoing efforts to accelerate the EV transition, including with more factories popping up in the United States. At the end of 2023, about 170,000 chargers had been installed nationwide, he said. Zaidi, who helped announced new grants for EV chargers, called the Republican resolution ‘part of a broader effort to take choices away from consumers to underplay and undermine efforts that would strengthen our energy security.’”

Even if some of the steel can’t be sourced in the U.S., all the chargers still have to be assembled in this country according to the rule that Republicans oppose.