President Joe Biden’s recent energy policy decisions to stop Keystone XL Pipeline construction and halt oil and gas industry drilling on federal lands will put America’s economy into “a full-fledged recession,” according to Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.).
“Absolutely, there is no doubt with the devastating executive orders that are coming out of the Biden administration and what you are seeing Democrats do in the House and what they are going to try to do in the Senate, it is costing thousands of jobs,” Mullin told The Epoch Times on Feb. 12.
“We’ve already realized that the Keystone pipeline itself will, directly and indirectly, affect 10,000 jobs, that’s crazy,” Mullin said. “Then, you start seeing the moratorium that they are putting on public land, on off-shore drilling, and the leases through the Bureau of Land Management, the list just goes on and on and on.”
He also was referring to Biden’s declaration that he will actively push federal policies aimed to ultimately end America’s use of fossil fuels and convert the nation to electricity generated by solar and wind resources.
“When they are talking about eliminating fossil fuels altogether, you’re talking about power plants now, you’re talking about manufacturing jobs now because, and this is something they don’t think about, if you eliminate fossil fuels out of the energy, you don’t have the power plants there to take the load, supply and demand becomes an issue and you are going to see energy prices that will be higher than they already are in California,” Mullin said.
“Manufacturers can’t stay open at that pace, they’re going to end up leaving and going to someplace else, to another country, so you’re not going to have just the oil and gas industry that will be affected, but you will have manufacturing jobs. It’s going to put us in a full-fledged recession.”
Mullin’s comments came in the wake of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Feb. 11 rejection on a party-line 31–26 vote of an amendment Mullin proposed that would have redirected $2.7 billion to mental health services focused on energy industry workers who lose their jobs.
Mullin said he offered the amendment because Biden’s policies are permanently killing jobs, which will have a devastating psychological effect on suddenly unemployed workers, including rising suicide rates.
“If we don’t address that issue, then we’re going to have serious problems on our hands,” Mullin told The Epoch Times.
Democrats on the committee, however, accused Republicans of ignoring the seriousness of climate change during the debate on Mullin’s amendment.
“It’s hard to take some of my colleagues seriously when they are not relying on the science and on the facts,” said Rep. Nannette Diaz Barragán (D-Calif.).
“This has turned into a climate discussion rather than a mental health discussion, so I would invite those here who don’t want to rely on science to come to my congressional district and congressional districts across the country where you have drilling in backyards, so you can see what it’s doing to communities, how it’s killing communities with air pollution and lung cancer.”
Barragan claimed that the CCP virus hits people with “respiratory problems, from the drilling, from the fossil-fuel activities that they have experienced in their backyards.”
Barragan wasn’t challenged to provide examples of individuals who claimed to have contracted the virus as a result of being exposed in their backyards to oil and gas drilling activities.
One Democrat on the panel, Rep. Lizzie Fletcher of Texas, expressed support for Mullin’s desire to provide targeted mental health services, but she said she voted against his amendment because, by increasing the $1.75 billion authorized for such mental health services to $2.75 billion, the proposal would have violated congressional reconciliation rules.
Mullins said he often points out to Democratic colleagues the vast number of petroleum-derived products used by Americans every day.
“Take eco-friendly clothing, that’s become a big thing and so much of the microfibers are made out of plastic. Every fleece that is out there is made out of plastic, so I think they understand it, they just can’t explain it. Explaining the end of the world is actually easier than explaining how dependent we are on fossil fuels,” Mullin said.
