WASHINGTON — More than 60 conservative groups are urging Republican leaders to hold firm against proposals to extend a wind energy tax credit.
They are worried that wind industry leaders and their congressional allies, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will push to reauthorize the wind production tax credit before the end of the year, while Democrats are still in charge of the Senate.
The conservatives, including the American Energy Alliance, Heritage Action for America and Americans for Tax Reform, said Republicans should not yield to that pressure during a lame duck session.
A better strategy is waiting to address the wind production credit as part of a broader tax overhaul next year, they said in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
“It makes no sense for the Republicans to give away any leverage they may have with respect to tax reform in the 114th Congress,” the groups said. “Calls to ‘clear the decks’ for the new congress are nonsensical; why would the newly elected Senate and House members — from either party — want to reward Sen. Harry Reid for his legacy of dysfunction by allowing him the opportunity to advance his pet priority, the wind production tax credit, during a lame duck session?”
Renewable project owners can claim the credit to shave their tax bills by 2.3 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity they produce over a 10-year period. Despite sputtering in and out of existence over the past two decades — and expiring at least eight times — it is credited with financing wind farms across the United States and making Texas a national leader in new wind power construction last year.
A proposal in a Senate tax bill would give the industry until the end of 2015 to start construction on projects and make them credit-eligible, at an estimated price tag of $13 billion over the next 10 years.
Critics say the tax credit is an expensive subsidy that unfairly props up the wind industry at the expense of other types of electricity generation.
Beyond the fiscal concerns, the coalition behind the new letter said rejecting a wind production tax credit renewal would be a blow to President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda.
“Rejecting efforts to extend the production tax credit is a meaningful way for this Congress to oppose the president’s climate plan,” the letter writers said. “A vote for extending the production tax credit is a vote for the president and the majority leader’s agenda.”
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