Senate committees unveiled new language for their portions of Republicans’ megabill Wednesday, wiping out entire sections that didn’t comply with Senate rules and modifying other provisions to try to salvage them.

The revisions would eliminate or slim down some of the GOP’s most ambitious energy and environment proposals as senators race to finalize the text and vote on it in the coming days.

The changes unveiled Wednesday follow a series of rulings from the parliamentarian clarifying which sections are ineligible under the rules of reconciliation. That process allows the majority party to bypass the filibuster so long as provisions have clear and direct budget impacts.

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Among the losses for Republicans are some proposals to repeal authorizing language for environmental programs in the Inflation Reduction Act. A rollback of EPA’s tailpipe emissions rule and language to limit permitting litigation for certain projects were also cut.

Most of the Senate’s original language, however, will be spared. That includes the proposed elimination of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a provision that would delay implementation of the methane pollution fee and an attempt to zero out fees for automakers that don’t meet vehicle efficiency standards.

Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said, “Our budget reconciliation title through the EPW Committee accomplishes what we pledged to do — stop Democrats’ natural gas tax and rescind unobligated dollars from the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, as well as a full repeal of the wasteful Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.”

But Republicans’ work is far from over. EPW ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Democrats were continuing to challenge megabill provisions.

And some other Senate panels — including the Energy and Natural Resources and the Finance Committee — have yet to finalize their text.

Those committees have proposed language on public land sales, energy leases, permitting and clean energy tax credits. ENR Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) said the parliamentarian was reviewing his latest proposal to sell some public lands Wednesday afternoon.

Senate Republicans have been sparring over the most contentious parts of the megabill since the House passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” H.R. 1, earlier this month.

President Donald Trump is insisting on signing a final product on Independence Day, even though the bill remains far from finished. Republican leaders and Trump himself are amping up the pressure on holdouts and working across the Capitol to try to find compromise.

“This bill needs to be back on the president’s desk by July 4,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday. “He’s always ready to whip if he has to. Hopefully he doesn’t and everyone just falls in line and gets this bill done.”

Energy and Natural Resources

Lee is banking on a last-minute rewrite of his provision to sell off millions of acres of public lands to save the measure from the parliamentarian’s knife.

But that outcome is far from certain. The parliamentarian has already denied Lee’s initial attempt at the land sales, and his new version, while far smaller in acreage sold, looks largely similar in structure to his earlier attempt.

“It’s being argued before the parliamentarian, I think right now, or sometime this afternoon,” Lee told reporters on his way to a vote Wednesday.

Lee’s new proposal would order the sale of up to 0.5 percent of Bureau of Land Management lands that are within 5 miles of a population center. That more than half of his initial proposal, which ordered the disposal of up to 1.5 percent of the federal estate.

Should the parliamentarian allow Lee’s land sale provision, it would likely create a new headache for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).

Four Republican senators — Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy of Montana, and Jim Risch and Mike Crapo of Idaho — have all publicly opposed land sales in reconciliation.

The dispute is also threatening the bill in the House, where Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) has vowed to vote against any bill that includes public lands sales.

Other ENR provisions are hanging in the balance. The parliamentarian already struck key provisions like speeding approval for the Ambler mining access road in Alaska.

Still at risk are new oil and gas lease sales in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and a 90 percent revenue sharing agreement with Alaska for oil and gas revenues in the Cook Inlet. Democrats are also hoping to strip a provision to push coal leases.

Permitting provisions change

The parliamentarian tossed several long-shot permitting provisions that Republicans hoped to pass along party lines.

Among the proposals axed was one that would have shielded companies from judicial review under the National Environmental Policy Act as long as the lead federal agency determined the project would not create significant impacts.

Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough also killed a provision from the House Natural Resources Committee and ENR that would have allowed natural gas export projects to pay a fee to be considered in the national interest.

She rejected a provision that would essentially exclude offshore oil and gas projects from NEPA review. And she ruled against allowing the Interior secretary to reduce fees for renewable energy projects on Bureau of Land Management acreage.

A surviving proposal from EPW would allow companies to pay a fee for faster environmental reviews — one year for an environmental impact statement and six months for a simpler environmental assessment.

“I suspect we’re not going to see big meaningful improvements from the reconciliation process on permitting reform,” said Xan Fishman of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “To really see the kind of bipartisan change, it’s going to take bipartisan legislation.”

Tax credit fight continues

Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.) helped lead a letter urging Senate leaders to protect incentives for residential solar. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP

A group of nine House Republicans sent yet another letter to Senate Republican letters urging them to soften energy tax credit phase-downs.

The letter, led by Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.), called for senators to extend the phase-out for the residential clean energy credit — 25D — for rooftop solar to 2028. The current Senate version would get rid of it in roughly six months.

“Over the past 15 years, over 5,000,000 Americans have installed solar in their homes across the entire country,” the group wrote. “It is estimated that over the next 5 years, the market will reach 10,000,000 homes with solar, many of which will also install energy storage which provides substantial benefits to our nation’s utility grids.”

Signing on was also Republican Reps. Andrew Garbarino of New York, David Valadao of California, Chuck Edwards of North Carolina and others. They’ve been among dozens who have called for easing the aggressive phase-out of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits, though they all voted for the more aggressive House bill, save for Garbarino, who fell asleep but said he would have backed it.

The letter comes as the Senate Finance Committee races to iron out contentious items in the GOP tax package, including on Medicaid changes, state and local income tax deductions, and the energy credits.

A group of senators, led by Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), have been pushing for tweaks to the tax credit language, but things remain in flux.

Curtis said he met twice with fossil fuel advocate Alex Epstein, who went to the Hill last week to urge senators to be more aggressive in killing the credits.

“We are clearly coming from a different place,” Curtis said Wednesday. “I am concerned about his approach to this. It’s more of a dagger in the heart.”

Vehicle regulations, fees

Senate Republicans are taking varying approaches to rules meant to promote cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars.

Capito’s committee backtracked on its effort to repeal EPA’s tailpipe emissions standard for model years 2027 and later after the parliamentarian ruled against the language.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee preserved language that would zero out fees imposed on automakers for not complying with the Department of Transportation’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.

EPA’s tailpipe emissions rule and DOT’s CAFE standards are seen as central pillars of what Republicans call the Biden administration’s “electric vehicle mandate.”

Meanwhile, senators will try again to add a section to the Finance Committee’s portion of the bill that would impose fees on electric and hybrid vehicles.

The House proposed to charge EV drivers $250 and hybrid drivers $100 every year to help shore up the Highway Trust Fund, which pays for federal road projects.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), a proponent of steeper fees, has said the annual fee was not included because of logistical complications.

Now he wants to add a provision that would require automakers to pay one-time fees for every EV and hybrid they produce in a given tax year. Automakers could then decide whether to pass those fees on to consumers.

“The one-time thing makes a lot more sense,” Moreno said.

He said that if his fee proposal — $500 for each EV produced and $250 for each hybrid produced — is not added to the final Senate bill, he will file an amendment to do so.

IRA cuts weakened

EPW originally proposed repealing authorizing language and rescinding unobligated funding for 25 different environmental programs that Democrats created in their 2022 climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act.

The committee’s new language, unveiled Wednesday, still proposes to rescind the funding, but it would leave intact the statutory authorizations — except for one.

The updated text still aims to repeal both the underlying statute and the unobligated funding for the GGRF, the $27 billion climate financing program that has become a favorite target of the Trump administration.

MacDonough had ruled that the statutory repeals were not permitted in reconciliation — except for the repeal of the language authorizing the GGRF. It was not immediately clear why MacDonough ruled that the GGRF can be treated differently.

“I think you’d have to ask the parliamentarian that,” Capito told POLITICO’s E&E News. “Our text reflects what the parliamentarian’s decisions were, because we have respect for her decisions.”

All of the GGRF’s $27 billion in authorized awards have already been obligated. Unless the Trump administration unobligates some of those funds, the rescission in the bill would likely only apply to the additional $30 million the Inflation Reduction Act provided through 2031 for program implementation.

EPW spared one Inflation Reduction Act program that had been targeted in the original proposal. The new text does not repeal any funding for the Council on Environmental Quality to train staff, process environmental documents and develop best practices for public engagement with regard to environmental reviews.

Brent Scott, a spokesperson for Capito, said in an email that the committee determined that the funding “can be used towards President Trump’s and Chairman Capito’s shared goal of expediting environmental reviews.”

The committee’s text keeps intact a plan to delay implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act’s fee on methane pollution by 10 years while clawing back funding to carry out the program.