The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“WAGING WAR ON AMERICAN ENERGY” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the in the House section section on pages H882-H883 on Feb. 27.
The Department oversees energy policies and is involved in how the US handles nuclear programs. Downsizing the Federal Government, a project aimed at lowering taxes and boosting federal efficiency, said the Department's misguided energy regulations have caused large losses to consumers for decades.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WAGING WAR ON AMERICAN ENERGY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, for the last 2 years, the Biden administration has consistently waged a war on American energy and our fuel sources.
This unscientific, ideologically driven assault has crippled American energy and hurt American families and our economy greatly. The American economy and our way of life are dependent on reasonable, reliable, and easy access to energy.
He has gone so far as to even deplete our Strategic Petroleum Reserve--as you see here, these numbers going down dramatically--in order to cover over this bad policy and make everybody think it is going to be okay.
Americans rely on access to low-cost, efficient energy from sources like natural gas to heat their homes, cook their meals, and keep their lights on. It is neither feasible nor desirable for most Americans to abruptly switch to green alternatives, such as wind and solar power, and have to change all of their appliances and yard tools out simply because of the whims of government and having too much time on their hands.
Many can't afford to do these changes, nor should they have to. The unreliability of green energy makes it a much less preferable alternative. Faced with a choice between these two, most Americans make the sensible decision to stick with low-cost, reliable natural gas over expensive, unreliable green energy.
In my home State of California, the electricity power grid in the summertime at any time could go down, yet they are trying to force people into electrifying just about everything--their cars, their stoves, their yard tools, even generators. Think about this for a minute. How do you have an electric generator when the power goes off from your electricity?
{time} 1230
I guess this is supposed to mean we have a warehouse of batteries somewhere because, otherwise, I don't know how you do it.
Generators are supposed to be a backup plan. Frequently, hospitals have diesel generators. People have generators they own for camping as well as backup for their homes. But they just keep going on and on, making up regulations.
So faced with these choices, Americans would rather have their own choices. This administration has essentially tried to ban and regulate Americans off of fossil fuels, off of nuclear power, it seems, until recently when California--hallelujah--decided to expand the Diablo Canyon Power Plant an additional 5 years, which is 9 percent of the power grid of California--9 percent. Imagine if they took that offline like they were hell-bent on doing.
Keeping natural gas is part of the equation. We have so much natural gas reserved in this Nation now because of the miracle of hydraulic fracturing. It is amazing what that has caused for us.
Radical environmentalists, though, can't take no for an answer. They have done away with trying to argue for their ideas and simply use government fiat, a stroke of a pen, to try and take these things away, including the latest proposal by the Department of Energy to ban gas stoves, which has got everybody all in a twitter right now.
Is that what we really need to be focused on right now with the situation with the railroad in Ohio and whatever the mess is we are going to make out of Ukraine, our border, and so many other issues?
No, let's keep people distracted with this gas stove situation here.
So what we have is a proposal by the Department of Energy to do it by the stroke of a pen, by just making a regulation to ban the sale of stoves that don't meet what is called an EL2 standard. They are just going to block the sales of these stoves, which means about half of them that are currently on the market will no longer be available on the market. People will have less choices that may not fit their style of kitchen, the size of their family. It may not fit a restaurant. It may not fit what you need for a kitchen that helps aid people that are short of food, soup kitchens. They want to take all these options away simply by a stroke of a pen.
People are getting furious over this stuff. And for families that enjoy the use of that gas stove, they work nice. I have one. I saw First Lady Jill Biden, a picture of her cooking on one in the White House.
So where does the hypocrisy end on all this?
Evidently, it doesn't end at the White House. It ends at the choices that humans have in this country.
We need to block this EL2 regulation that the Department of Energy is putting out, yet another thing that is trying to distract us I think from other issues. It is an important one for people to have natural gas stoves and other appliances that are available to them.
And so I sum up on that with the ideal being that the only reason we are really doing all this stuff, ostensibly, is because of CO
People think from all the hype over CO
So they would have us all live in caves eating crickets because of 0.01 percent and take away our stoves on top of that right now.
We have to fight back on the DOE regulation.
____________________