Rep. Steve Scalise noted how former Vice President Joe Biden’s promise to end fossil fuel consumption would damage the economic welfare of America’s “middle class” and “lower income” families, offering his remarks on Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
Biden and the broader Democrat Party regularly frame fossil fuel consumption as driving “global warming” and “climate change,” while implementing and proposing laws to end development of oil and gas resources.
The presidential campaigns of Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) described “climate change” as a “global emergency” — making 85 separate references to “climate” — in a 110-page jointly composed political manifesto dubbed the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force Recommendations.
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“He said he’s going to shut down the oil production,” Scalise recalled, highlighting Biden’s call to “transition” away from fossil fuels during the third and final presidential debate last week.
Biden has repeatedly made false statements about his own recorded support for ostensible environmental policies to combat “global warming” and “climate change.” He falsely claimed not to support the Green New Deal despite his own campaign website’s characterization of the leftist plan to end fossil fuel consumption as a “crucial framework” to combat a “climate crisis.”
Biden has consistently criticized fracking while promising to ban the process, despite his recent false denial of ever opposing the natural gas extraction method.
Scalise said what “a Biden administration would look like is the Green New Deal on steroids. He says he’s against the Green New Deal in the debate. The Green New Deal is on his website. He said he’s not going to raise your taxes, except that he’s going to repeal the Trump tax cuts, which raises your taxes. He said he’s not going to defund police, but then Joe Biden on video said that he’s for redirecting money away from police. Those are all the key components of the far-left socialist agenda, and that’s what’s on the ballot.”
Banning fossil fuel consumption would cause economic ruin, Scalise noted. He warned California’s inability to supply consistent electricity to its residents would become a national phenomenon under a Joe Biden presidency.
“It kills jobs, but also, it really is the biggest gut punch to the middle class — lower income families — who would be the ones that would pay the most in higher energy costs. Go look at the state of California — and again, all of these crazy ideas start in California, and then they try to export them to the rest of the country to wreck everybody else’s economy — but they’re having rolling blackouts in California with these kind of radical policies [such as] the Green New Deal and mandated standards that you have to have so much renewable energy to run your power grid.”
Scalise went on, “It’s just not available readily enough. It’s not available consistently enough, and what you end up having is no green energy. You end up having no energy, and that’s what they want to do for the rest of our country.”
Scalise identified Michigan and Pennsylvania as particularly vulnerable to the destruction wrought by ostensibly environmental left-wing policies.
“You would destroy the manufacturing base in America. Michigan — another swing state — good luck making cars when you don’t have reliable energy. Those cars would be made somewhere else. … That’s why we brought manufacturing back under Donald Trump. It’s why we rebuilt the steel industry in Pennsylvania, because we were able to get low cost reliable energy, and now we can actually send energy to our friends.”
Democrats’ stated plans to end domestic fossil fuel production would diminish America’s geopolitical position relative to its energy-producing competitors, Scalise noted.
“If Joe Biden has his way, we would have to get our energy, ironically, from Russia, from other countries, Middle Eastern countries who don’t like us,” Scalise stated. “Why would we want to go back to those days right when we’re starting to create and supply enough of our own energy to take care of our needs. That’s what’s on the ballot.”
Scalise added, “The division between the two candidates could never be more different. Donald Trump’s energy policy is it’s worked incredibly well for families, we’re paying lower costs for energy, we’re creating great jobs, and we’re sending energy to our friends around the world so that they don’t have to get it from hostile countries.”