WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a resolution Friday repealing a modern Biden administration rule on auto emissions that Republicans say would force Americans to buy unaffordable electric cars they don’t want.
The regulation, issued by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in March, sets the most ambitious limits in US history to reduce climate-warming emissions from passenger cars.
These measures come against a backdrop of degenerating sales of electric vehicles required to meet the standards.
While former President Donald Trump and other Republicans criticized the rule as a “mandate” for electric cars, it would not force the sale of electric cars. According to the EPA, the industry could meet the limits if 56% of modern cars sold were electric by 2032. The standard would also require at least 13% plug-in hybrids or other partially electric cars by 2032, as well as more effective gasoline-powered cars that exploit less fuel than those currently on the road.
The projected electric vehicle sales rate would represent a huge escalate from current sales, which rose to 7.6% of modern vehicles last year, up from 5.8% in 2022.
“The EPA’s latest emissions rule isn’t really about reducing air pollution. It’s about forcing Americans to drive electric cars,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Washington).
She called the rule “unreasonable” and “just another example of how the Biden-Harris administration, with its rush-to-green agenda, is giving China the key to America’s energy future, endangering our auto industry and forcing people to buy unaffordable electric vehicles they don’t want.”
New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the ranking Democrat on the Energy Committee, called the House measure “another attempt by Republicans to attack the Clean Air Act and roll back common sense protections against air pollution.”
The Republican measure “puts the profits of polluting corporations above the health and safety of the American people,” Pallone said, adding that the resolution was “ripped straight from Trump’s extreme Project 2025 playbook.”
Instead of focusing on funding the government, which is scheduled to shut down later this month, “Republicans are wasting their time introducing this resolution that they know has no chance whatsoever of becoming law,” Pallone said, noting that even if the measure passes in the Democratic-controlled Senate, it faces a veto from President Joe Biden.
“This is another example of Republicans not being serious about governing and not working to implement policies that actually benefit the American people,” Pallone said.
The House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 215 to 191. Eight Democrats voted in favor, while one Republican, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, voted against.
Republican Rep. John James of Michigan, who sponsored the resolution, said the “out-of-touch regulation” would “bankrupt Michigan’s auto industry and decimate our middle class and most vulnerable citizens.”
“People in my district simply cannot afford to spend an extra $12,000 on an expensive, unreliable electric vehicle,” James said. “Allowing the Biden-Harris administration to continue to restrict consumer choice will only hurt the American people.”
The EPA rule applies to model years 2027 through 2032 and would avoid more than seven billion tons of planet-warming carbon emissions over the next three decades. This would provide annual net benefits of nearly $100 billion, including lower health care costs, fewer deaths and more than $60 billion in lower annual costs for fuel, maintenance and repairs, the EPA said.
Cars and trucks are the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
The modern standards are technology-neutral and performance-based, said EPA Administrator Michael Regan, noting that there are “multiple paths companies can take to comply.” The EPA could meet its carbon emissions goals even if battery-electric vehicle sales were only 30% in 2032, as long as strict standards for gasoline-powered cars were met, he said.
Biden, who has made the fight against climate change a hallmark of his presidency, hailed “historic progress” in his promise that half of all modern cars and trucks sold in the United States will be zero-emissions by 2030.
“We will meet my 2030 goal and move forward at full speed in the years to come,” Biden said when the rule was signed into law in March.
