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The House of Representatives on Thursday passed a GOP-backed package of energy bills, setting up a showdown between the Democratic-controlled Senate and President Joe Biden, who has threatened to veto the legislation.

Congressional Republicans say the bill, known as H.R. 1 or the “Lower Energy Costs Act,” aims to lower costs for American consumers by cutting regulations, expanding oil and gas drilling in public lands and waters, boosting the extraction of mineral resources and rolling back large chunks of Democrats’ climate legislation passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act last summer. 

The bill had some bipartisan support, with four Democrats joining all present Republicans to pass the bill. The final vote was 225-204. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said the GOP bill “restores American energy leadership by repealing unnecessary taxes and overregulation on American energy producers,″ and “makes it easier to build things in America″ by placing a two-year time limit on environmental reviews that now take an average of seven years.

“Every time we need a pipeline, a road or a dam, it gets held up five to seven years and adds millions of dollars in costs for the project to comply with Washington’s permitting process,″ McCarthy said in speech on the House floor. “It’s too long, it’s unaffordable, it’s not based on science and it’s holding us back.″

President Biden on Monday threatened to veto the legislation, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday that the bill is “dead-on-arrival” in the upper chamber. 

“The president has … made clear he will veto H.R. 1, another bill that House Republicans have put forward to drive energy costs up for middle class families, pad the pockets of big oil companies and endanger the health and safety of all Americans,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at her daily briefing Monday afternoon. “It is no wonder the bill was endorsed by big oil companies.”

“All it takes is a brief glance at House Republicans’ H.R. 1 to realize it’s just a giveaway to Big Oil pretending to be an ‘energy package,'” Schumer said on Twitter. “It’s dead-on-arrival in the Senate.”

The American Petroleum Institute, the American Public Gas Association, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America — three energy industry trade associations that lobby Congress — all issued statements in support of the legislation. The American Petroleum Institute, which claims 600 corporate members, spent the seventh highest amount on lobbying of any group in the industry in 2022, according to OpenSecrets.org, a nonprofit tracking campaign contributions and lobbying data.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., the bill’s main sponsor, and Speaker McCarthy both represent states with massive energy industries and were among the top four congressional recipients of campaign money from oil, gas, and energy companies and executives the last three election cycles, according to OpenSecrets.org.

“Considering President Biden’s epic failures on energy policy, House Republicans will not take lectures from the Administration that has overseen record high gas and utility costs,” Scalise said in a statement Monday. “ Voters gave House Republicans the majority to reverse this insanity and make energy affordable again, and that’s exactly what the Lower Energy Costs Act does.”

“Families are struggling because of President Biden’s war on American energy,” Scalise said, adding that the bill will “unleash” domestic energy sources.

“We don’t have to be addicted to foreign countries that don’t like us,” he added.

“We will pass the bill this week, and urge the Senate and President Biden to work with us to make America energy independent again and provide the much-needed relief that [the] hardworking desperately need,” he added.

A spokesperson for Scalise did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the oil, gas and energy industries’ support of the legislation nor his receipt of those industries’ campaign dollars.

The Biden administration published a “statement of administration policy” Monday morning that explained their justification for the veto threat and expressed a desire to work with Congress to lower energy costs.

“The Administration wants to work in bipartisan manner with Congress to address lowering energy costs, permitting reform, and addressing energy challenges,” the policy statement read. “However, H.R. 1 would take us backward.”

Democrats called the bill a giveaway to big oil companies.

“Republicans refuse to hold polluters accountable for the damage they cause to our air, our water, our communities and our climate,″ Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said. “While Democrats delivered historic wins for the American people by passing historic climate legislation, Republicans are actively working to undermine that progress and do the bidding of their polluter friends.”

Schumer called the measure “a giveaway to Big Oil pretending to be an energy package.”

The House energy package “would gut important environmental safeguards on fossil fuel projects,″ locking America “into expensive, erratic and dirty energy sources while setting us back more than a decade on our transition to clean energy,″ Schumer said.

Schumer said he supports streamlining the nation’s cumbersome permitting process for energy projects, especially those that will deliver “clean energy” such as wind, solar and geothermal power. “But the Republican plan falls woefully short on this front as well,″ he said, calling on Republicans to back reforms that would help ease the transition to renewable energy and accelerate construction of transmission lines to bolster the nation’s aging power grid.

Schumer and other Democrats said the Republican bill would repeal a new $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and other parts of the climate and health care law passed by Democrats last year. The bill also would eliminate a new tax on methane pollution.