The Build Back Better Act, President Joe Biden’s roughly $2 trillion infrastructure bill, will reportedly contain more than $500 billion in carveouts to combat climate change.
Axios reported Tuesday that the Build Back Better Act will contain more than $500 billion in spending to address climate change.
Axios’ Alayna Treene said this would amount to “the single biggest component of the sweeping package.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told Axios that the provision would exceed $500 billion in spending.
“Everything else is getting a massive haircut, but this isn’t,” Schatz said.
“This will be, just as a matter of fact, the biggest climate bill in human history. At least half a trillion dollars. That’s a pretty good story to tell at the Conference of Parties (COP26),” Schatz added.
President Joe Biden will travel to the 2021 United Nations climate conference Thursday in Glasgow, Scotland. Biden has hoped to use the passage of his dual infrastructure bills as a way to tout America’s mission to combat climate change.
KEARNY, NEW JERSEY – OCTOBER 25: U.S. President Joe Biden gives a speech on his Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal and Build Back Better Agenda at the NJ Transit Meadowlands Maintenance Complex on October 25, 2021 in Kearny, New Jersey. On Thursday during a CNN Town Hall, President Joe Biden announced that a deal to pass major infrastructure and social spending measures was close to being done. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also announced on Sunday that she expects Democrats to have an “agreement” on a framework for the social safety net plan and a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill in the next week.The reconciliation package, which was slated at first to cost $3.5 Trillion, would still be the biggest support to expanding education, health care and child care support, and also help to fight the climate crisis as well as make further investments in infrastructure. Congress still needs to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill by October 31 before the extension of funding for surface transportation expires. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The White House also hosted approximately a dozen climate advocacy group leaders to review Biden’s efforts to combat climate change.
“If Biden walks into Glasgow without an agreed-to framework, it would undercut his credibility in global climate talks with world leaders,” Axios noted.
Biden’s inclusion of $500 billion in climate change funding would give more ammo to Republicans that this bill would amount to a “Green New Deal Lite.”
House Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Jim Banks (R-SC) charged in a memo in August that the Build Back Better bill amounts to “essentially a Green New Deal Lite.”
“Only $110 billion of the so-called $1 trillion-plus bipartisan infrastructure package goes toward road, bridges, and other major projects that the American people generally consider ‘infrastructure,'” Banks wrote.
Banks said that the remaining provisions of the bill are “Green New Deal provisions.”
Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
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