GOP-Led House Panels Shift Gears, Goes Full Throttle for Domestic Energy Production
It is a common practice for committees to set out their goals for the next two-years, particularly if a chamber has been under new management.
With Republicans assuming control of the United States House of Representatives following November’s midterm elections, the newly installed GOP leadership has been doing just that across the chamber’s 20 standing permanent committees and their 104 subcommittees and select temporary panels.
This week, the transitional shift-change was evident in seminal sessions of the 52-member House Energy and Commerce Committee and six subcommittees as well as in the 45 member House Natural Resources Committee and five subsidiary panels.
Four years under Democratic control, climate change and environmental protection have been a major concern. “green” The primary policy drivers behind legislation that sought to reduce dependence on oil and other gas were energy development, which included the $740 billion Infrastructure Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), both worth $1.2 trillion.
Two days of almost eight hours of hearings were held before the House Energy and Commerce Committee (February 7), and the full House Natural Resource Committee (February 8). Republicans stated that many of the initiatives adopted by the Biden administration to promote electric vehicles, carbon capture and green energy are still on the block.
Energy Panel Plans a New Course
Six witnesses testified during the nearly six-hour House Energy and Commerce Committee meeting on a raft 17 Republican-sponsored bills. Proponents claim these bills are crucial to their success. “restoring American energy dominance.”
Among the proposed measures that will dominate the committee’s and its subsidiary panels’ agendas in the coming months are bills prohibiting restrictions on hydraulic fracking without Congressional approval; expanding natural gas exports; repealing the IRA’s Green House Reduction Fund; and amending the Clean Air, Toxic Substances Control, Solid Waste Disposal, and National Gas Tax acts.
Within the tranche of proposed legislation on the committee’s “unleashing American energy agenda,” There are bills that call for reforming the permitting process and promoting the development of “critical minerals,” Interdiction of Russian Uranium Import
Republicans made the following argument when they opened the hearing for the day: “unleashing American energy, lowering energy costs, and strengthening supply chains” If the United States wants to remain economically competitive in the 21st Century and beyond, it must make this a priority.
“America has been blessed with an abundance of natural resources. We should be working towards developing a predictable regulatory landscape across-the-board that inspires innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological leadership, hydropower, nuclear, fossil energies, wind, solar, and batteries,” Rep. Cathy Rodgers, R-Wash., was the Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. She opened proceedings.
A nation needs an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, she and others insisted, claiming the Biden administration’s pro-green agenda is promoting technologies that either aren’t feasible or don’t have the domestic raw materials and processing capacity to now sustain.
They point out that electric vehicles (EVs), which require more than 80 percent lithium to produce them and are being promoted in China, are a case in point.
“Rush-to-green energy policies—both state and federal—have curtailed reliable energy and infrastructure, resulting in everything from blackouts to spiking prices,” Rodgers said. “These policies are unsustainable and lead to greater reliance on countries like Russia, or in our case, China. This is not a future any of us want.”
Democrats outnumbered by 29-23 in the panel said that panel Republicans were working for industry interests rather than the American people.
“We need our energy policy to have vision and that vision should not be solely about how to further enrich oil and gas companies, which are already raking in record profits,” Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., stated that he had been informed by Tonko about the situation. “strongly supports” reviewing and upgrading the nation’s energy strategies “but, unfortunately, nearly all the bills before us today continue to look backwards.”
Tonko and Rep. Frank Pallone, both Democrats from New Jersey, stated that a bill proposing to eliminate the Methane Emissions Reduction Program was shortsighted.
This program is for the industry “with significant funding to adopt emissions-reducing technologies with a market-based, incentivized approach,” Pallone stated. “This is a sensible program that provides certainty for industry while incentivizing the reduction of super pollutants from the oil and gas sector.”
There are many other bills “would create new loopholes in important environmental laws” What are the Republicans trying to do? “with little concerns for Americans’ air, water, safety,” He said.
“Committee Republicans are showing today that their top energy and environmental priorities … are to do the bidding of ‘Big Oil’ and to undermine our nation’s bedrock environmental laws,” Pallone claimed that the GOP was “stuck in the past, and failing to address the energy challenges and opportunities we face today.”
Natural Resources Refines Mission
The House Natural Resources Committee, with a 25–20 GOP majority, continued on the same theme Feb. 8 that the Energy and Commerce Committee established the day before.
Although there wasn’t any legislation on its agenda, the panel adopted its ‘Authorization and Oversight Plan,’ essentially a mission statement, in a 21–16 partisan vote.
“House Republicans made a lot of promises last year and now the American people have given us the majority and we are ready to deliver on those promises,” Chair Rep. Bruce Westerman, (R-Ark. said. “It was clear that energy independence, energy security, and lowering consumer costs was a top priority for our country and, therefore, for this committee.”
The 12-page plan (PDF) calls for enhanced budget and spending reviews of federal land management programs and agencies under the committee’s jurisdiction’; expanding domestic energy production; expanding oil and natural gas programs, including offshore; investing in renewable and alternative energy; advancing “mineral security; and reducing coal mining regulations, among other initiatives.
Westerman said despite the push for alternate energies—and President Joe Biden’s State of the Union comment about oil and gas only needed for 10 more years—80 to 85 percent of U.S. energy use comes from oil and gas.
“Given this dependence,” He said that every administration, regardless its party affiliation should be working “to unlock American potential to produce these necessities of life. Instead, we’ve seen an attack on the production of American oil and gas, on mining, which translates into an attack on the economy of America.”
U.S. producers are subject to stifling regulations “doesn’t help the environment out one tidbit when we are importing these products from countries that do not have near the human rights standards, near the environmental standards, or can produce these materials as efficiently and effectively, as we can there at home,” Westerman said.
He said that current energy policies are not only detrimental to the economy, but also threaten national security. “We are exporting wealth from here in the United States, many times to our adversaries, because of a not-in-my-backyard mentality. We hope to change that mentality.”
Westerman stated that “narrative out there that Republicans only care about the bottom line and don’t care about the environment … is false” And they are often short-sighted.
“Republicans care about the environment and the economy” Belief is everything “we produce more products here at home, we benefit both greatly,” He said. “The problem with the Democrats, and this administration particularly, is two things: physics and math. They ignore the science to create the idea of utopia centered around electric vehicles. I have no problem with electric vehicles,” But, at the moment, the nation doesn’t have the capacity to support massive expansions of EVs without enriching China.
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the committee’s ranking member and recently unseated chair, said the plan gives climate change and its impacts short shrift.
“Climate change is only mentioned twice” In the plan, he stated. “Yet the single most-pressing issue affecting every single one of us every single day is climate change. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle still think it can be ignored, avoided, and, in some instances, outright denied.”
Grijalva said the panel’s Democrats will insist “that climate must be a central focus of any legislation” He called on Republicans to support this emphasis, even though he acknowledged it was unlikely.
“There was a moment yesterday in the president’s State of the Union address—almost like an epiphany—where we reached common ground” Acceptance “Social Security and Medicaid was off the table. We’re all going to work together to make them stronger. I thought that was a rare and good moment, a special moment,” He said. “I hope we can look to find some common ground on some issues in this committee, but I don’t think today is one of them.”
Grijalva’s proposed amendment to incorporate a statement that the impacts of climate change be weighed in evaluating proposals was shot down in a 21–15 partisan tally.
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