House Republicans on March 14 introduced a new reform package aimed at restoring America’s energy independence, though Democrats have already signaled it will face challenges passing through a divided Congress.
It is co-sponsored by Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Sam Graves (R-Mo.).
The bill—which would scale down environmental regulations and expand oil and gas drilling in an effort to tackle the energy crisis, among other things—will be considered on the House floor at the end of March.
“For the last two years, President Biden and his extremist friends in Washington have waged a war on American energy, and hard-working families across the country are paying the price,” said Majority Leader Steve Scalise in a statement introducing the bill.
Key Measures in Bill
The bill includes a string of energy policy proposals aimed at increasing fossil fuel production, including fast-tracking fossil fuel projects, expanding oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters, and streamlining and expediting energy infrastructure and exports by reforming the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), an environmental rule requiring federal agencies to consider the impacts of their actions on the environment, which is considered sacred by Democrats.The bill would also boost the domestic production and processing of critical materials that are used in advanced technologies, and cut red-tape regulations to open up pipelines.
The bill also requires more offshore oil and gas lease sales to be held and would ban Biden from declaring a moratorium on the use of fracking unless such a moratorium is authorized by Congress.
A string of other measures are featured in the bill, which includes legislation led by 26 individual members and produced by the Committees on Energy and Commerce, Natural Resources, and Transportation and Infrastructure.
Democrats Criticize Bill
A coalition of 27 groups, led by the conservative political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), has already voiced support for the bill in a letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Fox News reported.Rodgers, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement that the bill “boosts energy production, lifts regulatory burdens for the construction of more energy infrastructure, cuts China out of our critical materials supply chains, and lowers costs across the board.”
However, Democrats promptly took aim at the reform package, calling it a “non-starter in the Senate.”
In a speech delivered on the Senate floor on March 15, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused House Republicans of rolling out a “partisan, dead on arrival, and unserious proposal for addressing America’s energy needs that they have laughingly labeled H.R. 1.”
“Republicans’ so-called energy proposal is as bad and as partisan as it gets. H.R. 1 will lock America into the most expensive and volatile dirty sources of energy and will set America back a decade or more in our transition toward clean, affordable energy,” Schumer said.
He later branded the bill a “wish list for Big Oil, gutting important environmental safeguards on fossil fuel projects, while doing none of the important permitting reforms that would help bring transmission and clean energy projects online faster.”
Amid the ongoing energy crisis, Republicans’ reform package will likely face challenges among Democrats as the Biden administration continues to focus on advancing clean energy and has canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and drilling leases on public lands.
Biden’s $6.9 trillion fiscal year 2024 budget plan is largely aimed at shoring up clean energy technologies and scrapping billions of dollars in oil and gas industry subsidies.
