Bloomberg: Environmental Groups Launch Lobbying Blitz to Push Biden Bill
Updated: Apr 28, 2022
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Digital ads, editorials target battle ground states, senators
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‘President Biden must keep his promise,’ petition says
By Ari Natter
A coalition of environmental groups and other Democratic-aligned organizations are launching a lobbying campaign to pressure President Joe Biden to get the Senate to move on his stalled spending plan and the hundreds of billions of dollars in climate funding it contains.
Plans call for digital ads and opinion essays released in battleground states as well as organized phone calls, meetings with key Senate officials and events such as caravans of bicycles and electric cars. The goal is to “encourage President Biden to keep his promise to take bold action on climate change by cutting carbon pollution in half by 2030,” said Margie Alt, executive director of the Climate Action Campaign. And “to encourage key Senators to press their colleagues to move quickly and pass the Build Back Better act.”
The Climate Action Campaign includes the League of Conservation Voters, Earthjustice, the Center for American Progress and Public Citizen. Campaign planners didn’t release a cost of the effort but said it would be in the “six figures.”
A petition the group is seeking to deliver to Biden prior to his State of the Union Address reads in part: “President Biden must keep his promise to take meaningful action on climate, justice, and clean energy. He must do all he can to convince the Senate to swiftly approve the Build Back Better Act and the climate, justice, jobs, and clean energy investments it delivers.”
The effort comes as Democrats and the White House work to find a way to advance a new version of the so-called Build Back Better Act with its $550 billion in energy and climate spending, including more than $300 billion in new and expanded tax credits for wind and solar power, nuclear plants, biofuels and advanced energy manufacturing. The effort stalled amid objections to the broader measure from Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, pivotal votes in the evenly divided chamber. Since then Biden has singled out the bill’s climate measures as one area where he though agreement could be reached.
Separately, more than 100 businesses, labor groups, environmental organizations, and others penned a letter to congressional leaders asking them to keep clean energy and industrial tax measures, such as a credit for carbon capture, in the bill.
“It is essential that the next iteration of budget reconciliation legislation retain the extraordinary gains made on carbon management and broader clean energy and industrial incentives in the BBBA’s most recent text,” said the letter, which was signed by companies including Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. and steel producer ArcelorMittal SA.
That follows an effort by almost 300 renewable power developers and manufactures who earlier appealed to congressional leader to advance the proposal’s climate provisions. Those provisions are estimated to more than double clean energy investment to $750 billion over the next 10 years, potentially helping the U.S. deploy 750 gigawatts of wind, solar and battery storage by the end of the decade, said the letter signers, which included Avangrid Inc., Dominion Energy Inc., NextEra Energy Inc., Orsted A/S and Schneider Electric SE.
