Late last month, Republicans attempted to pass several resolutions of inquiry (ROI)—questions to which it wanted answers—on various energy topics. One member demanded to know about the Biden administration’s use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to artificially tamp down gas prices. Another wanted to know what the administration planned to do about the power grid. Two questions pertained to White House speculation about declaring a national climate emergency. However, the Democrat-controlled committee rejected the ROI measures.
While the cost of energy remains near sky-high, and large swaths of the country remain at risk of blackouts this winter thanks to energy shortages, the Biden administration continues taking seemingly corrupt and illegal actions that are only making the nation’s power problems worse.
For example, reports unveiled that the White House sold nearly 1 million barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves to a Chinese state-owned gas company with financial ties to a private equity firm partly owned by Hunter Biden. Surely no one can say this move smells right when the U.S. is battling national security threats from the People’s Republic of China and an energy crisis of its own. Currently, no one knows how this policy move came to be, but the ROI rejected by the House Energy and Commerce Committee could have changed that.
The Biden administration has also taken actions that, if finalized, would effectively stop the creation of any new natural gas pipelines during this nationwide energy crunch. Richard Glick, the radical environmentalist who heads the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has said federal court rulings mandated this policy change. But in truth, the law requires the commission to approve all gas projects that are in the public interest and don’t have significant environmental impacts.
While Glick told Congress the Biden administration did not influence this decision, The Wall Street Journal recently uncovered that he rushed through the pipeline proposal shortly after he began holding biweekly meetings with Deputy White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi. As the paper noted, “it’s hard to believe the two never talked about pipelines.”
Without question, this administration is taking the country on a dangerously radical energy policy ride, but it shouldn’t be allowed to do so in the dark of night. As Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Republican leader, put it during the markup of the energy accountability resolutions: “the hardworking people of this country like the parents who can’t find baby formula, the pipeline worker out of a job, the mom who can’t afford her groceries or electricity bills, and the parents who lost a child to a fentanyl poisoning…deserve accountability and answers.”
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party disagreed. Apparently, it doesn’t care much for transparency and has no problem with the White House ostensibly sacrificing America’s energy future on the altar of partisan politics.
The American people will remember this come midterms.
Joseph R. Pitts is a former U.S. congressman from Pennsylvania who served on the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on the Environment and the Economy.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
