Senate Republicans cannot force the U.S. Postal Service to scrap thousands of electric vehicles and charging equipment in a massive tax and budget bill, the Senate parliamentarian said late on Sunday.
The U.S. Postal Service currently has 7,200 electric vehicles, made up of Ford e-Transit vehicles and specially built Next Generation Delivery Vehicles built by Oshkosh Defense.
USPS warned on June 13 that scrapping the electric vehicles would cost it $1.5 billion, including $1 billion to replace its current fleet of EVs and $500 million in EV infrastructure rendered useless and “seriously cripple our ability to replace an aging and obsolete delivery fleet.”
Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, whose role is to ensure lawmakers follow proper legislative procedure, said a provision to force the sale could not be approved via a simple majority vote in the Republican-controlled chamber and will instead need a 60-vote supermajority, according to Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee.
There’s really no point in opposing EVs except if you think it will win you elections for some reason because your voters think EVs are woke or some shit.
I can understand opposition to EV mandates like in California because it is heavy handed market intervention. But this? This is like forcing federal agencies to continue doing things on pen and paper instead of computers.
Ok But even then …… I live in a state that elected to follow CARB rules and everyone I know realizes EVs are inevitable and wishes we’d transition faster. Im probably in an echo chamber like everyone else, but the states that were moving most aggressively were also the states that predominantly want to move aggressively…… and vote blue.
It could be one reason we were only 61% blue instead of 65% as in 2020, but there’s really no significant reactionary politics here
My brothers live in purple states, following EPA standards, and resistance to EVs is pretty solid. Why do they care if they’re not even following the more aggressive standards? If they think it’s heavy handed or wastes money, feel free to laugh at “owning the libs” and vote in what you think is your best interest. That’s what I don’t get: not only how it turned political but how are people so strongly against something that doesn’t affect them?
Yeah no I agree but at a federal level, especially with the outsized economical power California has, you would have to look at if a regulation that they pass could have shockwaves that could be problematic in other states. Like let’s say the top 5 economies in the US decide that ICE engines are banned so now the car manufacturers decide that they can no longer sustain their ICE manufacturing anymore and will only sell EVs. What happens to states that do not have the infrastructure to support only EVs on their roads? So that’s why I say that at a rational level I can understand opposition to that sort of lawmaking.
But actively stopping any organization from adopting a technology that is objectively superior is just stupid. It’s actually anathema to free market capitalism.