The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | Biden Earns an ‘F’ on Energy Policies, Lawmaker Says as House OKs GOP Bill to Lower Costs

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

When it comes to President Joe Biden’s energy policies, he has earned “an F,” says Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont. Rosendale is one of 221 Republicans who voted Thursday in support of a bill, HR 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act. The vote was 225-204 with four Democrats joining the Republican majority and one GOP member voting against it, according to CBS News. The legislation, which passed in the House, would “lower energy costs by increasing American energy production, exports, infrastructure, and critical minerals processing, by promoting transparency, accountability, permitting, and production of American resources, and by improving water quality certification and energy projects, and for other purposes,” according to the bill's text.   Rosendale and Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., join “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain what is included in the bill and to discuss how Biden’s handling of America’s energy resources has affected the economy and even U.S. national security. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, March 31st. I'm Virginia Allen. Yesterday, the House voted on and passed a bill that Republicans say will lower the costs of gas and oil across America and make the country more energy independent. The bill is called HR1, or the Lower Energy Costs Act. It passed 225 to 204 in the House, almost directly down party lines. Now it heads to the Senate for a vote. I recently had the chance to talk with members of Congress on Capitol Hill about the bill and what it would mean for the cost of energy across America. Representative Matt Rosendale and Representative Harriet Higman join the show today to explain what is included in this energy bill and to grade President Joe Biden for his handling of America's energy resources. Stay tuned for those conversations after this. I'm Mark Geinney from the Heritage Foundation, and we are very pleased to bring you the next chapter in the Heritage Explains podcast. Over the years, this show has been so loved by so many people, and we want to keep bringing you the insights into policy and current events that you've come to expect here, while updating the show with a new sound, a new format, and some new voices. Most notably, we're excited to upgrade this show from a one-off format where we bring you different topics each week to a serialized format,

where we craft deep dives into hot-button issues in the form of season. series of shows that focus the intellectual weight of the Heritage Foundation on one topic. First up, a six-episode series on the biggest existential threat to our nation right now, the Chinese Communist Party. Check out the new Heritage Explains wherever you get your podcasts. We are joined today by Congressman Rosendale. Congressman, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for being here.

Great to be here with you, Virginia. Thanks for having me on. Now, something that every American wants is lower energy costs. We all want to be paying less for gas, less for our heating at home. Now, right now, Congress is considering HR1. Tell us what exactly this bill is and how it would actually help to lower energy costs across America. So I think we really can look at three-prong operation here. One, we're going to make sure that our mining operations can be permitted faster.

We've got a lot of critical minerals located across the country. We have discovered that we are far too dependent on China and other. adversaries, foreign adversaries, to produce those minerals. So we're going to increase our own domestic production. The next thing is that we have to get our domestic energy production increased as well. The Biden administration has reduced it by nearly about 2 million barrels a day, crude oil, and that is not only hurtful to our economy, it's driving the inflation rates up even higher, but it also puts us in a position where our foreign adversaries can take advantage of us as well, puts us in a national security risk. And then that's the third prong of it, is to increase

the pipelines and the refinery capacity that we have here domestically, make sure that we put the permits in place to allow that to happen. And again, that not only helps us and to reduce our inflation, get our energy costs down, and increase our national security position, but also puts us in a position to help our allies overseas with exports so that they are not reliant upon foreign adversaries as well. Okay, so talk a little bit more about how this bill would help other countries, and what's the message if Congress passes HR1, President Joe Biden signs it?

What message does that send to China? Well, it starts turning things back around. We saw the Biden administration as soon as they took office that they were closing down our domestic energy production by cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline. They lifted the economic sanctions on the Nord Stream 2, gas pipeline, which empowered and enriched Russia. And so what this will do is send a signal across the world that we are ramping up our domestic energy production and that we are going to help our allies.

And one of the most strong ways that we can help our allies is to make sure that they have access to low-cost energy as well. Now, some Democrats are claiming that this bill is just a giveaway to big oil companies. What's your response to that? I visited a wind farm 30 miles north of Miles City that would not have been possible, if not for a $30 million subsidy that was provided by the Green New Deal provisions of the Biden administration. What they call support is really just making reasonable fees that were in place before the Biden administration. And so there's no handouts. There's no gimmies or subsidies involved with this legislation.

What it does is it gets government out of the, way and just reduces the bureaucratic red tape that producers need to go through in order to access our domestic energy. When you consider President Joe Biden's energy policies over the last few years since he took office, what grade would you give him for those policies? It's not just me, it's the country. They gave him an F, and that's because he eliminated the production of just about two million barrels a day of crude oil.

And when you take that out of the marketplace, it drives cost up. It's a very simple policy of supply and demand. And the cost of energy is on a global market. And when you take that much production out of the equation, and the demand stays about the same or increases, then the cost is going to go up. And this is not only hurt our economy and drove inflation cost up. But again, it has compromised our national security as well,

putting us in a position where we had to start tapping, into a strategic petroleum reserve. So let's say in America we can get to a point where we are significantly energy independent. What does that change in America? What will that mean for the American people for our economy? So it changes the entire dynamic of how we look at things. What it will do is help to bring down the cost of inflation, which drives, it's basically a tax on every single product that you purchase, from your groceries to your pharmaceuticals,

to the new automobile. It drives the cost of everything up. And so it will also put us in a position where we are not reliant upon foreign adversaries for energy, which puts us in a much stronger position from a national security standpoint. So it will improve the economy. It will strengthen our national security

and then put us in a stronger position as we go around the globe and start making negotiations, whether the trade agreements or otherwise. So how likely do you think it is that HR1 actually becomes the law of the land, and we take a step towards becoming more energy independent as Americans. I think that it's going to pass through the House very easily.

When he goes over to the Senate, I still think that it will probably pass because you have several very vulnerable senators on the Democrat side that are facing difficult elections coming up. So I think that they're just going to go ahead and vote for it, and then it will land on the president's desk, and he's going to have to make a decision about whether he's going to stand with the people of America or whether he's going to stand with the tyrants and our adversaries around the world. Congressman, thank you for your time today.

We really appreciate it. Thanks, Virginia. Next up, I'm talking with Representative Harriet Higman, specifically about what this bill would mean for coal production in the United States. Stay tuned. We are joined by Congresswoman Harriet Higman. Congresswoman, talk a little bit about the situation that we find ourselves in, right now, related to American energy and American energy independence, what needs to change?

Well, what needs to change is the current administration's war on our energy industries. So Wyoming is one of the largest energy producers in the nation. We're the largest coal producer or one of the top oiling gas producers, and we have rare earth minerals as well. So Wyoming has been very involved, I guess you'd say, in ensuring the prosperity of this country as a whole. for a long, long time. We do an incredible job protecting our environment as we access the minerals and the resources that we have. If you go up to Gillette, to our coal mines, for example,

you go out into the oil and gas fields, I think that you would be surprised at how incredibly beautiful the area is and what we do in terms of reclamation. But what you have right now is an administration that has gone to war against our energy industries and really against the American public by doing everything in their power

to increase the cost of energy, food, and housing. It's bad policy. We need to change it. HR1 does that. I'm very excited about HR1 for another reason as well, which is that it includes my coal act, COAL, which would make it so that we can access our federal lands for purposes of coal production.

So I'm looking forward to being able to vote on HR1 and making sure that we can move forward with sound and appropriate energy policy in this country. Talk a little bit more about coal production for a minute if you would. because obviously there's concerns that we hear often from the left as it relates to the health that coal has on individuals and the production of coal. What's your response to that? Well, there's a lot of misinformation about coal is the reality. And again, I would love to take folks up to Gillette and take a tour of a coal mine.

And I think they would be surprised at how incredibly efficient as well as environmentally sound the entire operations are. coal has become a boogeyman because CO2 has become a boogeyman. The left has been screaming about global cooling and global warming and climate change and everything for decades. And what it really comes down to is an effort by them to take more and more and more control over our lives. It's so interesting to me that every time you do talk about energy policy, the left and the Democrats and Joe Biden, their response is we need more government control and less access to energy. which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Coal is the energy of the future.

You cannot produce, there are so many things you cannot produce without coal and without carbon, including you cannot produce steel without coal. You cannot produce concrete without coal. Coal is absolutely an energy of the future, and we're going to be using it for a long, long time. What is your message to the Biden administration? What would you like to see them do as it relates to energy policy to really be putting America first in that regard?

Well, I am at America first person, and I do not believe that it is the entitlement of government to adopt policies to make our lives more miserable. I think about what they're doing, and I would describe it as government-imposed wretchedness. When you listen to how they talk, when you listen to their policies, when you look at what they're attempting to implement

by taking away gas stoves and attempting to make our dishwashers less efficient, and trying to make it so that we can't have air conditioners. Everything that they do is to make our lives more miserable. And none of it makes sense when you actually have the facts about the energy resources that we have in this country. We have an abundance of oil and gas that is accessible and affordable. We have an abundance of coal that is accessible and affordable and clean.

We have the ability to use these resources and, again, continue to generate the kind of, energy, electricity, gasoline, all of those things that we need for a civilized society. And right now we just happen to have an administration that has gone to war with the kind of the building blocks of the foundation of our society. And as we increase energy production in America with things like coal, what would that mean for our pocketbooks here in the United States? Well, it's going to make it better for everyone.

The reality is that the foundation of our economy is affordable energy. Affordable energy has an impact on affordable food, which has an impact on affordable housing, which has an impact on affordable transportation. Really, the building block of where we are as a first world country is affordable energy. And, again, if we're able to use our resources right here, we're disempowering countries like Russia, Venezuela, and the Chinese Communist Party, while empowering Americans and growing our businesses and our prosperity right here. Congressman, last question before we let you go.

If you had to give President Joe Biden a grade for his energy policies, what grade would you give him? F minus. Can you give an F minus? Thank you. Thank you, Congresswoman. Thank you. And that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast. If you haven't had the chance, be sure to check out our

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Executive producers are Rob Blewey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.