(The Epoch Times)—The first Senate adaptation of President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful” Fiscal Year 2026 budget bill retains the wholesale slashes and clawbacks in “green energy” allocations adopted by the House when it passed its version of the spending plan by a single vote on May 22.
Although some timelines are extended, the draft budget released on June 16 by the Senate Finance Committee largely replicates the House’s terminations of individual tax credits for purchasing electric vehicles, heat pumps, and energy-efficient domestic appliances, and for installing rooftop solar panels.
The senior chamber’s initial stab at the proposed FY26 budget, which the House laid on its table, also eliminates or dramatically scales back decades-old corporate wind and solar subsidies that were expanded under 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act.
It pulls the plug on most of the renewable energy subsidies Trump labeled “the new green scam.”
“This bill prevents an over-$4 trillion tax hike and makes the successful 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent, enabling families and businesses to save and plan for the future,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said in a statement accompanying the 550-page budget outline.
“It delivers additional tax relief to middle-class families still recovering from record inflation under the Biden administration,” he said.
“The legislation also achieves significant savings by slashing ‘Green New Deal’ spending and targeting waste, fraud, and abuse in spending programs while preserving and protecting them for the most vulnerable.”
Democrats are expected to fiercely contest the across-the-board “green energy” cuts and are likely to restore some with the aid of dissenting Republicans in the 53–47 GOP-led chamber, before kicking the plan back to the House, where Republicans hold a slim 220–212 majority.
Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) aims to get the budget through Congress and on to the president’s desk by July 4, a tight timeline in narrowly divided chambers unlikely to be achieved without concessions on both sides of the aisle.
The first showdown for the energy components in the Senate Finance Committee’s tentative budget comes on June 18, when Energy Secretary Chris Wright presents the Department of Energy’s $46.3 billion FY 2026 budget request to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The department’s proposed budget trims spending by 7 percent from this year’s $49.8 billion plan, slashing allocations for non-defense energy programs by 26 percent, including more than $3.7 billion in “green energy” programs next year while pulling the plug on nearly $20 billion in dedicated funding for renewable energies through 2032.
Those cuts and rescissions in approved allocations through 2032 are incorporated into the budget passed by the House and into the Finance Committee’s alterations set to be debated in the Senate, beginning with Wright’s 10 a.m. June 18 hearing before the full 20-member Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, paced by 11 seated Republicans.
The Senate Finance Committee’s proposed spending plan outlines its energy components in Chapter 5 between pages 29–35.
The chapter features 15 sections, 10 in “Subchapter A: Termination of Green New Deal Subsidies” and five in “Subchapter B: Enhancement of America-First Energy Policy.”
The first subchapter includes sections terminating tax credits of up to $7,500 for electric vehicle purchases, energy-efficient home improvement credits up to $1,200, and rebates of up to $2,000 for heat pumps and biomass induction stoves.
Those incentives were to expire in 2032, but under the proposed budget, they will end six months after adoption.
While the Senate’s initial plan ended the EV credit within 180 days, the version ended it on Dec. 31, 2025, but extended the credit through the end of 2026 for automakers that had not already sold or built EVs.
The committee’s spending plan ends tax credits of $2,500 to $5,000 for homes built to Energy Star and Zero Energy Ready standards within a year of the budget bill’s enactment.
As with the House bill, the Senate measure essentially ends the “rooftop solar” credit for homeowners who install solar panels on rooftops.
Under current law, taxpayers may claim a credit for residential expenditures for solar electric property, solar water heating property, fuel cell property, small wind energy property, geothermal heat pumps, and battery storage property in service by Dec. 31, 2024.
The value of the credit is 30 percent of the expenditures through Dec. 31, 2032.
Both chambers’ proposed plans terminate the credit 180 days after their enactment.
Among energy-related tweaks in the Senate and House plans are long-standing wind and solar subsidies enhanced by the Inflation Reduction Act will be extended longer in the Senate’s proposal.
While the House pulls the plug with the president’s signature, under the Senate’s budget, wind and solar companies can still garner the full benefit if they begin planned projects within six months, 60 percent if they break ground in 2026, and 20 percent if they initiate in 2027.
Those built from 2028 will no longer receive tax benefits.
The Senate plan also preserves tax credits for companies that build nuclear reactors, geothermal plants, hydropower dams, or battery storage through 2033, which the House version trims.
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