Biden energy agenda puts China, bureaucrats first

From the office of
U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise
R-Louisiana

WASHINGTON, D.C. — House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) appeared on Fox Business Network’s "Kudlow" to slam the Biden Administration’s new rule to end sales on cars with internal combustion engines in favor of electric vehicles powered by batteries made in China. Scalise noted how many of these harmful rules are pushed by unelected left-wing bureaucrats with virtually no accountability, and that House Republicans will reintroduce legislation to rein in government overreach and return legislative authority to elected lawmakers and the American people. Scalise also railed against President Biden’s refusal to meet with House Republicans and retake control of the Administration’s runaway spending.

On the EPA rule to end the sale of internal combustion-powered cars:

“Stephen Miller was spot on as he often is, you know, I think like Stephen, you and me all watched ‘Schoolhouse Rock!’ and, you know, ‘I'm Just a Bill,’ and people used to learn how a bill becomes law. And it started with Congress passing that change in law and then the president signs or vetoes it. 

“Now, if you want to change the way America works, you just go into one of these bureaucracies and carry out your far-left radical agenda that way and, you know, and look, I mean, we're gonna challenge this in the courts, you're going to see a challenge in the hopefully defeated but at the end of the day, it's the idea that they want to do this to you. The big-government socialists want to change the way we live our lives, and it's not because they want to help America. You know, they call it the ‘green agenda’. I call it the ‘red agenda,’ because where are these batteries being made? In China. 

“You know, you look at all the things they're doing, they're making us more dependent on China. Nobody makes things better in the world than America. Unfortunately, on the Left, you see these radicals wake up every day and they find ways to just beat up America. They think America is the worst place in the world. I mean, I'm sick and tired of it. I think most Americans are sick and tired of it but, you know, they just continue to do this where they want to tell you how to live your life and, by the way, they don't live by those same rules. You've seen them over and over again, the hypocrisy of the Left that, you know, they'll fly around on private jets telling you to drive around in a Prius by yourself with three masks on. 

“You've seen it, you know, what are they going to do to charge these electric vehicles by the way? Gavin Newsom, who's trying to put this mandate on the people of California, literally announced days after he said, ‘Let's get rid of the combustion engine in California,’ told you, ‘Don't charge your electric vehicle in your light socket at night’ because they don't have a grid that's capable of handling recharging your cars. You know, you don't plug these things into a tree.

“Common sense at some point has to be invoked. You know, let people actually make their own choices and again, nobody makes things better than America. Stop beating up American making us dependent on China for God's sake.”

On government overreach: 

“The Lower Energy Costs Act is really focused on allowing us to explore and produce our own energy here in America and become dependent on no other country – get rid of that dependency. And as Stephen Miller was asking about earlier – you know, the critical minerals that are used in everything from electric vehicles to computer chips – we are dependent on countries like China for all of that. We actually allow our country to mine a lot of those critical minerals here in America. But there's another bill Larry, and I know you and I talked about this years ago called the REINS Act, and this is a bill we're going to be bringing to the Floor again. 

“The REINS Act really gets to the heart of these out-of-control unelected bureaucrats, and it says any unelected bureaucrat that comes up with an idea, great, let's go have a hearing on it. If it makes sense, their rule would actually be voted on by Congress and implemented and if it's really stupid – which a lot of them are – we vote it down. But it doesn't happen if it has an impact on the economy unless Congress votes it up or down. That's the REINS Act. That's something that we're going to be continuing to promote that would solve this and many, many other problems.”

On debt ceiling negotiations:

“You're going to be excited about what you see next week and, in fact, Speaker McCarthy is going to be laying this out Monday in a speech he gives on Wall Street. But at the end of the day, President Biden wants to run out the clock. He wants to create a debt crisis. You'll watch and look, every week he's going to start talking about, you know, ‘Gee whiz’ unless he gets another credit card to go max out – because he maxed the last one out – that the world is going to collapse and that he's going to refuse to pay the minimum balance. He's going to just let our country default. 

“That's crazy talk. It's not something we should even be flirting with yet. President Biden is because he doesn't want to negotiate about spending. I think most Americans recognize: Of course you pay your debts, but you also don't keep racking up more debt. You don't get another credit card to max out when you've maxed out the last one. You get control over your spending and doing things like putting basic requirements on work so that if you're getting welfare, it should only be there if you're on hard times. You shouldn't be getting $35,000 a year from the taxpayers of America if you just want to sit at home and turn down work or not even look for work. And I think that's what people are fed up with. You know, think of the single mom who is working two or three jobs right now to make ends meet. She's got to be paying for some 30 year old kid who's sitting in his mom's basement collecting 35,000 a year. It's not right. It is not something that we can continue doing. 

“So we are going to have a lot of reforms, things like clawing back a lot in the COVID unspent money, putting basic requirements, you know, you got all these people here illegally – millions that have come in – many of are collecting lots and lots of taxpayer-funded benefits that they're not even eligible for because they don't even have eligibility on a lot of these benefits. 

“Why don't we just clamp down on some of the abuse that's going on out there? You'll save trillions of dollars, and we won't keep maxing out the credit card like [President] Biden did with his spending spree he went on the last two years. 

“And we've got to solve this problem. We've got to solve the spending problem. At the same time, we are talking about why Biden maxed out the nation's credit card over the last two years.”