Though households quickly save money on energy bills when they buy more expensive bulbs that waste less power and last longer, Americans for years didn’t push the transition forward absent a government nudge. This left hefty national savings on the table, as well as a surprisingly large environmental dividend. The EPA calculates that every incandescent bulb switched for a more efficient compact fluorescent bulb saves about 84 pounds in carbon dioxide emissions every year. The Energy Department figures that a transition to super-efficient LED bulbs by 2027 would save about 44 large power plants’ worth of electricity (h/t Brad Plumer).

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So Congress passed some simple light bulb efficiency standards in 2007. Lawmakers didn’t ban incandescent bulbs. Instead they demanded that bulbs produced in or imported into the U.S. use no more than a certain amount of electricity to produce a certain amount of light. If manufacturers could make incandescents less wasteful, they could produce the improved bulbs freely. One result has been a boom in the commercialization of new lighting technologies that could save Americans some $6 billion next year.

Another result was an upsurge in counterproductive ideological fuming from the right: In a different budget compromise passed earlier this year, Republicans added a rider prohibiting the Energy Department from enforcing the bulb standards. The rules are still technically on the books, and major manufacturers have switched over to producing better bulbs. But the government won’t be able to stop anyone from playing to people’s short-term bottom line by producing, importing or selling ancient Edison bulbs. It’s not clear whether that will happen on a large scale, in part because retailers have been selling leftover inventories of old-design incandescent bulbs over the course of this year. But those supplies will run out. Regardless, in the latest budget deal Republicans again tacitly encourage undercutting the efficiency rules, keeping the rider in place.