Five years after Congress passed the largest climate-friendly infrastructure investments in American history, Democrats are gearing up for a second round.
Things will be different this time.
Republican committee leaders are set to release a first draft of the surface transportation reauthorization in the coming weeks and are making it clear they want little to do with the emissions-reducing, clean-energy-promoting language that helped turn the last highway bill into the hulking $1.2 trillion infrastructure law.
That’s why bipartisan negotiations toward a final bill could set the stage for Congress’ next big battle over federal energy and climate policy.
The highway bill could have major implications not only for broader efforts to tackle the country’s largest source of planet-warming emissions — but also for November’s midterm elections, where incumbents will be looking to flex their energy, affordability and public safety bona fides.
“We need to invest in a greener transportation system,” said Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), ranking member on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
“Democrats will fight for it,” Larsen said. “But the end result will be a balance of what we can get done as well.”
Lawmakers are aiming to pass a bipartisan highway bill before the end of September. Striking a balance on politically charged topics such as permitting, electric vehicles and biofuels could be a significant challenge at a time when the Trump administration is spearheading Republicans’ animosity toward renewable energy.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has suggested that Democrats will have no incentive to advance a bipartisan highway bill if the administration continues its attacks. Without a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, the GOP can’t act on its own.
Similar issues have plagued bipartisan talks on a permitting reform package, which is a prime candidate for inclusion in the highway bill.
House Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) — who is eyeing language imposing annual fees on drivers of electric and hybrid vehicles — laid down his vision for the package last fall, announcing he is aiming for a “traditional” highway bill.
“That means laying asphalt and pouring concrete, fixing roads and fixing bridges,” Graves said in a brief interview last month.
At an event last year, he said that also means not funding “murals and train stations or bike paths and walking paths” — a clear jab at some of the climate-friendly Democratic priorities in the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021.
A Senate predecessor to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the “America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act” of 2019, had a climate title — a first for a highway bill. It advanced out of the Environment and Public Works Committee with unanimous support under GOP control.
Broad bipartisan backing for climate-focused provisions seems all but impossible this time around.
“Fast-forward to current deliberations, none of that’s going to be on the table,” said Luke Bassett, who helped draft the IIJA as an adviser to then-Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.). “I just don’t see any appetite.”
“My hunch is they would be branded as woke,” said Bassett, who now serves as director of the Energy Security Project at the Searchlight Institute.
Still, Democrats and the electric vehicle industry are already pitching Republicans on pro-EV policies they want to see included. Larsen suggested they might have to get creative in how they frame “green” provisions in the negotiations.
Graves and EPW Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) are planning to release legislative text potentially in the next month. Capito is aiming for a markup in her committee in early March.
Battle lines
The highway bill could carry a host of transportation and infrastructure policies with significant environmental implications. Members will be jockeying to get their preferred provisions into the “must-pass” legislation.
“Transportation continues to be a significant source of dangerous fossil fuel emissions, and we’re going to continue to try to remedy that,” said Whitehouse.
Already, lawmakers on either side of the aisle have signaled that they will pursue fees on EVs and hybrids, new support for electric car chargers, an authorization of year-round sales of E-15 biofuel, changes to the Highway Trust Fund and disaster recovery reforms. There could also be language on rail safety and pipeline safety.
Even weeks and months before the bill’s expected release, Republicans and Democrats have been drawing battle lines and sending warnings about what kinds of provisions they intend to pursue — and which ones they won’t tolerate.
In November, 88 congressional Democrats sent a letter to the leaders of the Senate Environment and Public Works and House Transportation and Infrastructure committees saying that any plan to undermine funding for EV charging would jeopardize the whole bill.
“Attempts to eliminate investments in cleaner transportation run counter to the cooperative spirit this process depends on,” the lawmakers, led by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), wrote in the letter.
“While we understand that reforms may be necessary and that legislating inherently requires compromise, we urge you to ensure that this reauthorization process does not take a partisan tenor replete with extraordinary attempts to undercut zero-emission technologies, investments, and American innovation,” the letter states.
Democrats can expect stiff pushback to their own proposals to curtail transportation emissions. Republicans used the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to target tens of billions of dollars in previously approved investments aimed at reducing carbon pollution. Capito said they don’t have plans to slow those efforts before the highway bill.
“Some of those programs that were created, the money hasn’t even been spent; they haven’t set the parameters,” said Capito, referring to climate investments in the IIJA and the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We don’t want to waste money or time here, which is what’s happened,” Capito said. “But that’s going to be in the process of negotiation.”
A spokesperson for Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) declined to comment but suggested that the Texas Republican could home in on changes to the corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards during highway bill negotiations.
Congressional Republicans effectively neutered those requirements through their party-line budget reconciliation bill last year. The Trump administration has proposed its own updated CAFE standard.
Lanes for climate action
In the face of Republican opposition, Democrats may seek to frame pro-climate priorities in ways that make them more likely to gain traction in the negotiations.
“On sidewalks and bikes, my pitch will be on safety,” said Larsen, acknowledging that Graves does not support using the highway bill to fund those kinds of zero-emission transportation options.
Advocating safety upgrades along walking paths and bike lanes could be a way to expand investments in those priorities without labeling them climate objectives.
Democrats may make the argument that other climate-coded modes of transportation, such as public transit and EVs, need additional support because they are or soon will be “part of the tradition,” as Larsen put it, with millions of Americans relying on them every day.
“When you look at an average urban environment in the U.S., it is a multimodal bonanza,” said Nick Nigro, founder of Atlas Public Policy, a research firm that analyzes EV trends.
“A traditional highway bill ignores all of that and moves away from putting the U.S. in a position of leadership, which I think would be a mistake,” Nigro said. He added, “If lawmakers pull the wool over their eyes and put blinders on to that stuff, we’re going to miss the boat.”
Graves wants to include a provision in the highway bill that would impose an annual $250 fee on EV drivers and a $100 fee on hybrid vehicle drivers, which would more than compensate for the gasoline taxes they do not pay when compared to drivers of internal combustion engine vehicles.
Recent modeling from the environmental group Evergreen Action shows that a $250 annual fee on EVs would meaningfully slow EV adoption, increasing transportation-sector pollution by 230 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent between 2027 and 2045 relative to the status quo.
Some electric vehicle advocates are so eager to keep Graves’ proposed EV fee out of the bill that they have backchanneled with his committee to offer their own counterproposals well before the bill has been drafted.
The Zero Emission Transportation Association, which represents EV manufacturers, submitted a letter to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee suggesting a $100 annual fee, which the group already believes is more than EV drivers’ fair share.
Graves reiterated in an interview that while he opposes some climate-focused proposals, he is committed to producing a “member-driven” bill.
“We’ve never had a time when the difference between what we have and what we need has been so great,” Graves said, “so we’re going to have to figure all of that out.”
This story also appears in Climatewire.
