Scalise: Biden's Unrealistic Energy Policies Threaten America
WASHINGTON, D.C.—House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox News Channel's Mornings with Maria to discuss how Joe Biden's liberal environmental policies would disproportionately impact hard-working families and destroy American energy independence. Whip Scalise blasted Joe Biden's unrealistic plan that would destroy American jobs, increase energy costs on hard-working families, and make our country less secure by increasing our dependence on oil from Russia and Middle-Eastern countries.
On Joe Biden's energy policies that would hurt America:
"When you look at what President Trump's done to bring the energy industry back, we're literally not only a dominant energy producer so that we can create our own energy, we're now sending oil and natural gas to our friends all around the world. It's helped us geopolitically, it's helped our friends reduce their dependence on Russian energy, the Saudi oil that they used to be so dependent on, its weakened OPEC. So, why anybody would want to go away from that boggles the mind. You know, as you know, from Texas, Louisiana, but so many other states are part of the energy business now. Look at Pennsylvania, you know, this was a key topic during the debate where Joe Biden went back and forth on the issue of banning fracking. Who knows where he's going to fall on it, but the fact that he would want to bring someone like John Kerry who had one of the most failed foreign policies, I mean, John Kerry went and helped get the deal to give Iran a nuclear weapon. [He] undermined our biggest ally in the region, Israel, as well as so many other countries there. So, I hope we don't go back to those kinds of policies.
"As you can see, the President's still pursuing his legal challenges and got a win just over the last few days in Pennsylvania where the courts said they can't certify the election there. So, you know, still game to be played there, but I think it's telling when you look at some of the people that Joe Biden would surround himself with – including John Kerry as a global warming czar. Look, the Paris Accord has been a failure. No country in Europe is even in compliance with it and they exempt China. China would take so many countries manufacturing jobs. We don't want that to happen to America, we're bringing manufacturing back. We need to strengthen our economy and focus on helping hard working families become part of the middle class, not give China the gains that we've made over the Trump first term that we've had."
On how the Paris Accord fails to protect the environment:
"This is why it was such a smart move for President Trump to get out of the Paris Accord in the first place, because think about this, we were losing manufacturing under the Obama and Biden years. Those eight years we saw our middle class evaporate; we saw manufacturing leave America in droves. Great companies were leaving America and stuff was still getting made. It wasn't like we weren't making steel; they just weren't making steel in Pennsylvania; they were making it in countries like China and India where they don't have the kind of standards that we already have. A lot of these people that these globalist global warming alarmists that love beating up on America, they fail to recognize that we actually have really good standards that are unrivaled anywhere in the world. And so, when you exempt China, for example, from these kinds of standards the steel will still get made, it'll just get made in a country where they emit four or five times more carbon than if we make it here in America. So, if you're concerned about carbon emissions, getting into the Paris Accord will actually lead to an increase in global carbon emissions because those things that are made in America in a smart way, in an environmentally safe way, will instead be made in other places where they emit more carbon."
On how liberal environmental policies disproportionately hurt working-class Americans:
"When [Democrats] say that they're against fossil fuels, you watch them and they fly around on jets, and they drive cars, you know, even you've got to plug your Prius into something, you don't plug it into a tree, you've got to get energy from somewhere. A lot of times it's natural gas, coal, nuclear power. They want to get rid of all of that and yet, you know, they're going to try to wreck your lifestyle but there's a lot of hypocrisy built into that. But in the meantime, you know, you look at what energy has done to save lives and improve our way of life. We're able to get low-cost energy in America. It not only helps us manufacture, which has rebuilt our middle class. You know, all these people, the hard-working families in all these states that you've talked about, they're making good income. Their wages were rising before COVID and we're going to get back to those days. But if you if you were to get rid of the energy industry in America, you know, and think that just wind and solar panels are going to make up the difference, you wouldn't even be able to get 20 percent of your household electricity grid with that kind of energy. So, why would you want to wreck America's economy? Again, that stuff's going to get made, it's just going to get made in countries like Brazil, China, India where they emit more carbon."
On the importance of the Georgia Senate elections:
"Look, everybody that looks at all of these planned shifts to the left, the socialists that are fighting in the House to say that they're going to go back to open borders. I mean even, you know, Joe Biden's talking about stopping the building of the wall and literally just letting anybody into this country regardless of what the legal process is ought to recognize that the only way to stop any of this is in this United States Senate right now. And those two seats are everything. It's all on the line. . . . I hope the people of Georgia vote for both Senator Perdue and Senator Loeffler. Everything's on the line."