Senate to vote on voiding California EV rule this week in break with norms
Washington — The U.S. Senate will vote within days on overturning California’s stringent and influential regulations mandating 100% electric vehicles by 2035, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday.
The move has massive implications for the U.S. auto industry and represents a dramatic break from past procedure by Senate Republicans.
“While the Biden EPA EV mandate was bad,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said in a floor speech, “California is much worse. And (if) we don't act, the consequences to our economy, the consumers and to our electricity supply could be devastating.”
The Senate vote, which only needs a simple majority to pass, would nix a waiver granted late in the Biden administration for California to set nation-leading emissions standards that would have forced automakers in a number of states to electrify their sales quickly or face steep fines. The decision to take a vote at all, however, means Republicans are overruling the Senate’s parliamentarian — a nonpartisan arbiter of chamber rules.
“It's not even a sledgehammer. It's like a nuclear bomb,” Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, said of the break from typical procedure. “It sets a really dangerous precedent and basically subjects a lot more to the procedures within the Congressional Review Act than the Act intends.”
Senate Republicans plan to vote on the California waiver using the CRA, a law that gives Congress the power to cancel rules set by outgoing presidents, so long as the rules were finalized within the last 60 legislative days of a given year.
The parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, determined last month that emissions waivers for California, legally, are not rules and therefore not subject to the CRA. But Republicans have disagreed with that determination and plan to move ahead anyway.
Thune, in his Tuesday speech, pushed back against critics condemning the move as a break from procedure.
“Let's be very clear: the EPA has submitted the waivers to Congress as rules, which is all the Congress has ever needed to decide to consider something under the Congressional Review Act,” he said. “There can be no question if these waivers are rules in substance, given their widespread effects.”
The EPA under the Biden administration did not submit the waiver as rules to Congress. But Lee Zeldin, the agency’s new administrator under President Donald Trump, did so on Feb. 14.
Thune continued: “This debate … is not about destroying Senate procedure or any other hysterical claim the Democrats are making … The fact of the matter is that their purported concerns here are entirely misplaced. We are not talking about doing anything to erode the institutional character of the Senate.”
The U.S. auto industry has lobbied heavily in recent months to have the waiver overturned, claiming that the strict emissions rules would represent an existential threat to automakers and dealerships if they remain in place.
"That's what we're really afraid of, because we only have 22% of our sales statewide are electric vehicles," said Brett Hedrick, owner of Hedrick's Chevrolet near Fresno, California.
He said dealers cannot force buyers to purchase EVs: "It should be dictated by the market."
This is a developing story. Please check back here for updates.
gschwab@detroitnews.com
@GrantSchwab
Staff Writer Summer Ballentine contributed.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Senate to vote on voiding California EV rule this week in break with norms
