Texas Joins Coalition Demanding Senate Reject Energy Bill They Say Undermines States’ Rights

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks at CPAC at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas, on July 11, 2021. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Texas has joined a Louisiana-led coalition of 17 state attorneys general opposing a rushed U.S. Senate bill they say would let the Biden administration “run roughshod over states’ rights” by advancing a “radically impractical energy agenda.”

Meanwhile, the White House sees the legislation as enabling and connecting “clean energy” into the country’s electricity grid.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday co-signed a letter to Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) opposing the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022, saying it is effectively a back door to the failed Obama-era Clean Power Plan.

According to the letter, the bill contains three interrelated provisions that, when taken together, allow private companies and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to eviscerate states’ ability to chart their own land-use and energy policies.

“First, it would authorize private companies to use eminent domain against state land. Second, it would authorize FERC to command utilities to construct entirely new transmission facilities whenever and wherever FERC deems necessary,” the letter states (pdf).

“And third, it would authorize companies to spread costs of constructing new transmission facilities onto residents of other states, requiring citizens of one state to subsidize the agenda of politicians and bureaucrats in other states.”

Under eminent domain, a governmental authority can seize property from a private or public owner for public purposes.

Paxton’s office said in a statement that this would allow the Biden administration, largely through the FERC, to “run roughshod over states’ rights by advancing a radically impractical energy agenda, all while forcing taxpayers to foot the bill.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Sept. 21 that the legislation, which she said will boost America’s ability to get clean energy built and connected to the grid, has the support of President Joe Biden.

“Today, far too many energy projects face delays—keeping us from generating and shipping critical, cost-saving clean energy to families and businesses across America,” Jean-Pierre said in a statement. “This is an important step forward to further unlock the potential of these projects and the good-paying jobs they support.”

The bill itself states that it directs the president to “develop a plan for the United States to achieve energy independence by 2024.” It also approves the TransCanada Keystone Pipeline in Phillips County, Montana—one of the state signatories to Monday’s letter.

Getting Around States’ Rights, Undermining Voters

The attorneys general expressed concern that the bill will empower “certain states and companies favored” by the Biden administration and the current FERC majority to distort states’ energy policies, take state and private land, and force everyone to pay for it even if they didn’t vote for it.

So long as the Biden administration deems certain energy projects to be in the “national interest,” Paxton’s office said the FERC would likely have the ability to command private companies to “construct new and extremely expensive transmission facilities wherever and whenever FERC determines.”

Under the bill, a simple three-vote majority of the FERC commissioners is all that’s needed to commandeer companies, which the attorneys general said effectively “eviscerates” state sovereign authority.

They said this would undermine the “power of each citizen’s vote to decide policies” at the state level. Further, the citizens of their states would be forced to subsidize the costs of the “expensive and unreliable energy policy preferences of California and New York.”

Taxpayers would be forced to pay for the transmission facilities even if they don’t live in that state and have no access to the energy they may create, according to Paxton’s office, which noted that this would “advance the Biden administration’s radical climate agenda.”

“Even worse, these drastic and draconian changes are being rushed through without committee hearings, markups, and the full debate expected of the world’s greatest deliberative body,” the letter states.

“This utter lack of transparency is a manifestation of Congress’ ‘new normal,’ under which laws are passed before the several States and their citizens can find out what is in them.”

“Even Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson never sought to disrupt this federalist system. And worse, it is being proposed with little to no time for the American people to be informed about the costs that will be imposed upon them when these misguided policies are implemented,” the letter states.

The Epoch Times asked Schumer’s office for comment.