Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The GOP’s Dead-On-Arrival Energy Package

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on H.R. 1, the House Republicans’ newly released Big Oil wish list masquerading as an energy package. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Yesterday, Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans rolled out a partisan, unserious, and dead-on-arrival so-called energy package they laughably labeled as H.R. 1.

It’s not difficult to see that the Republican proposal is nothing more than a wish list for Big Oil masquerading as an energy package.

No serious energy package would gut important environmental safeguards on fossil fuel projects while leaving out necessary permitting reforms needed to bring transmission and clean energy projects online.

Rather than prepare for the future, Republicans’ Big Oil wish list would lock America into expensive, erratic, and dirty energy sources. The Republicans’ so-called energy plan would set us back decades in our transition to clean, affordable energy. It shows the influence that Big Oil has on the Republican House Caucus because it seems that this package was almost written by Big Oil.

So let me be clear: the House Republicans’ so-called energy bill is dead on arrival in the Senate. Dead on arrival.

And I would say to my colleagues, we can still get something done. Fortunately, many Democrats and Republicans understand that we need bipartisanship in order to produce a real energy package. As we speak there are talks happening in good faith about the possibilities of a permitting deal.

I strongly—strongly—support both sides working together to arrive at a real energy bipartisan package, not the partisan wish-list Republicans have introduced.

Any genuine energy package must include a permitting deal that will ease America’s transition to clean energy, while also ensuring that clean energy is reliable, accessible, and most importantly, affordable.

Transmission is vital to getting clean energy from where it's produced to where people live, but the Republicans’ H.R. 1 proposal completely ignores this issue, to its detriment and its demise.

Until Republicans recognize that permitting reform is an essential step towards laying the foundation for a clean energy future, no proposal or package they put forward will be taken seriously.

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