House approves bill preventing Biden admin from regulating home appliances

The House on Tuesday passed a bill designed to ensure that any new energy efficiency standards promulgated by the U.S. Department of Energy be based on available technology and economic reality, according to a media release from the bill’s sponsor.

Rep. Debbie Lesko’s office said that the bill passed with bi-partisan support.

“I am saddened that we would need such a bill,” Lesko said in the release. “However, as we have experienced under this administration, the Department of Energy has unleashed an avalanche of new regulations for household products, including stoves, dishwashers, washing machines, showers, toilets, water heaters, air conditioners, heat pumps, and furnaces.

“No government bureaucrat should EVER scheme to take away Americans’ appliances in the name of a radical environmental agenda, yet that is exactly what we have seen under the Biden Administration,” she added (emphasis original).

Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington spoke in support of the bill from the House floor, calling the “rush to green agenda” by the Biden administration “out of touch” with the priorities of everyday Americans.

The Biden administration is waging war on American energy, and this war is making its way into Americans’ homes.

The administration is doubling down on unaffordable appliance mandates—which is why we’re leading on H.R. 6921. Watch: pic.twitter.com/Y8oYpDZNJe

— CathyMcMorrisRodgers (@cathymcmorris) May 7, 2024

The intent of the bill is to tweak the way in which the DOE creates new regulations or modifies or revokes existing ones as they apply to consumer products like household appliances, but specifically excludes vehicles, according to a summary of the bill on the official congressional website.

According to a summary of the bill, if enacted, it would grant the DOE the authority to “grant a petition to revoke or amend energy conservation standards if it finds that the standards (1) result in additional costs to consumers, (2) do not result in significant conservation of energy or water, (3) are not technologically feasible, and (4) result in a product (e.g., gas stoves) not being commercially available in the United States to all consumers.”

It also would require all new or modified regulations to be ” technologically feasible and economically justified,” according to the summary.

The website listed 10 cosponsors of the bill, all of whom are Republicans.

Interested readers can read the bill in its entirety below.

H. R. 6192 by The Western Journal on Scribd

According to the U.S. House Clerk’s Office, 205 Republicans voted to pass the bill along with seven Democrats. All 195 votes against the bill were from Democrats.

Of those listed as “Not Voting” on the bill, 11 were Democrats and 12 were Republicans.

The bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, although passage seems unlikely given the Senate’s refusal to take up similar bills in the past, such as Lesko’s Save Our Gas Stoves Act, passed by the House in 2023.

According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would require no significant additional federal government spending.