Donald Trump wheeled and dealed his way to imminent legislative victory Thursday, promising renegade right-wing Republicans favors to win their support for his budget megabill.
With five Republicans initially voting no, and others declining to vote at all, an all-night House session has apparently whittled opposition down to just one — meaning the bill is expected to pass Thursday.
According to CNN, the dissenters were won over by promises including that the president would use executive power to aggressively kill Biden-era clean energy tax credits — a backroom commitment that flipped key holdouts.
Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who had been a vocal opponent of the Senate version, suddenly found himself singing Trump's praises on CNBC after a White House sit-down.
"He did a masterful job of laying out how we could improve it, how he could use his chief executive office, use things to make the bill better," Norman gushed.
Wednesday's West Wing turned into a Republican parade ground as Trump arm-twisted lawmakers into submission on his sweeping domestic agenda. CNN reported that Trump was making specific promises.
Norman's about-face came after Trump personally assured him that green energy subsidies would face the chopping block through aggressive enforcement.
"President Trump is going to use his powers to — like on the subsidies, to make sure that it's a lot of these subsidies won't remain in effect, you know, from here on out," Norman revealed.
The promise hit exactly where it needed to. Conservative Republicans had been fuming over the Senate's more gradual timeline for phasing out renewable energy tax credits — programs they view as Biden administration boondoggles that need immediate termination.
Norman described the issue as make-or-break during final negotiations: "Up until late in the night, we were negotiating, you know, things that could change with, you know, the tax credits, which all were put in by Joe Biden, which needed to be extinguished."
But Trump isn't actually changing the legislation itself. Norman admitted Trump won't override the bill's language.
Instead, Trump's strategy involves weaponizing the enforcement process, making it dramatically harder for clean energy projects to actually qualify for federal subsidies.
"He's going to, on the permitting, he's going to drive a hard bargain on the permitting. He's going to have accountability, is the best way to describe it," Norman said, hinting at forthcoming executive orders designed to strangle green energy programs through regulatory red tape.
