GOP House Speaker Johnson backs keeping some of Biden's clean energy tax credits

• House Speaker Mike Johnson said some provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden's landmark clean energy bill have been helpful to the economy overall.
• Negotiations over extending the 2017 tax law are still in early stages ahead of their 2025 expiration.
• A group of 18 House Republicans asked Johnson to keep some energy tax credits.

U.S House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would preserve some of the clean energy tax credits enacted under President Joe Biden but would seek to eliminate others, as an upcoming battle over taxes next year comes into focus in Washington.

In an interview with CNBC, the Louisiana Republican said it would be impossible to "blow up" the entirety of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping climate and economic package signed into law in 2022.

"You've got to use a scalpel and not a sledgehammer, because there's a few provisions in there that have helped overall," Johnson said at the Riggs Washington D.C. hotel on Tuesday. He added that most of the law was "terribly harmful to the economy."

Johnson declined to specify which provisions he would support keeping in place, saying he's "not putting any of that on the table yet."

Johnson is not the only Republican who wants to keep parts of the IRA intact, nor is he the only one who won't specify what, specifically, he would leave in place.

More than a dozen members of Johnson's own party, many of whom face difficult re-election fights, asked the speaker in a letter last month to preserve some of the tax credits and deductions in the IRA.

They noted that some provisions had led to more development and growth in their districts. The letter didn't specify what specific measures the lawmakers wanted to keep.

"Prematurely repealing energy