Op-ed: Rep. Brett Guthrie: Unlike the Biden-Harris administration, Republicans are permitting the path to energy independence
Under the watch of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, America has gone from being energy independent to depending on our foreign adversaries to supply the energy we need each day. The price of gas in my home state of Kentucky and nationally is over a dollar higher than when Biden and Harris took office; it reached record highs of more than $5 in 2022.
The America-last agenda of Biden-Harris is nothing new. On their first day in office they ended construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, preventing hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from eventually reaching the American public each day and killing good-paying jobs in the process. The Biden-Harris administration also canceled leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, placed a moratorium on oil and gas leases on federal lands, and deployed a radical far-Left regulatory agenda to fulfill then-candidate Biden’s promise to “end all fossil fuels.”
Vice President Harris went a step further, cheering on Biden for this harmful campaign platitude, and has since done nothing to stop Biden from working to eliminate fossil fuels, despite recently flipping her position and stating she doesn’t support a ban on fracking anymore. In fact, Harris fully supports the elimination of fossil fuels and was an original co-sponsor in the Senate of the Democrats’ radical Green New Deal plan which aims to completely eliminate all U.S. fossil fuels.
Yet, despite all the Biden-Harris policies to crush American energy production, we have hope across our nation lying under the soil.
One of the key centers to the future of American energy innovation is the Permian Basin, which stretches across our southwest, and I recently traveled to Texas to meet with Rep. August Pfluger to see the future of American energy. While I was in the Permian Basin, which has some of the highest producing oil and gas fields in the country, I was able to visit our proud American energy workers and see American energy production in action. These communities are fueled by oil and gas production, where revenues drive public funding to hospitals, schools, police departments, and other community institutions.
This future depends on permitting reform to allow for American energy production to drive down the costs of energy for everyday Americans and to ensure grid relatability. As a result of the radical environmental agenda of the Biden-Harris administration, our energy workers across the Permian Basin and the nation are not able to reach the full potential of their work, which can bring our nation back into energy dominance once again.
The Biden-Harris energy strategy drives up emissions worldwide by relying on oil and gas from our adversaries while boosting mineral production and refining from places that have no environmental standards and lengthy track records of human rights violations. While Biden and Harris are focused on foreign energy from countries that hate us, House Republicans are committed to ensuring our nation has the safest and cleanest energy in the world.
The prosperity and security of our nation has always been inextricably linked to access to reliable and affordable energy. To ensure that our nation is once again energy independent we must reform the permitting process to expand our energy production capabilities, reduce our reliance on foreign adversaries, and allow for further investment in our energy rich nation. Republicans advanced H.R.1, the Lower Energy Costs Act, which is our solution to the nation’s broken permitting system.
Our comprehensive approach will leverage our abundant oil, gas, and mining resources to lower costs for households and fuel economic growth in job creating industries. I am proud of the work that Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans have done to help lead the way in this fight.
Our bill cuts through unnecessary red tape, imposing strict permit deadlines, empowering lead agencies to effectively coordinate project applications, and eliminates redundant reviews that raise costs and delay construction. Importantly, our bill would reform environmental review processes to prevent far-Left activists from weaponizing the courts to fight necessary development. I am proud that my resolution, H.Con. Res 17, was included in H.R. 1 to ensure that no restrictions are made on future American exports of crude oil or petroleum products.
By reducing federal bureaucracy in permitting, we can help reshore domestic industries and lift up communities that are built on American energy and that have been forgotten by the Biden-Harris administration.
I am proud to help lead the way to American energy dominance and independence once again. Everyday Americans have struggled for the last four years with rising gas prices and home energy costs thanks to the America-last agenda of the Biden-Harris administration. Next year if I am lucky to serve as the Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, I am committed to leading America into the future of energy production and lower energy costs. This path begins by following through with House Republicans’ commitment to reforming the permitting process and restarting the flow of American-made energy back to the American people.
