WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox Business Network’s Kudlow to discuss how President Biden’s extreme climate policies have led to record-high gas prices. Whip Scalise urged President Biden to end his war on American energy and stop blaming U.S. energy producers for an energy crisis that was created by Democrats’ anti-American energy agenda. Additionally, Whip Scalise praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rejecting the EPA’s attempt to unilaterally impose a radical climate agenda.
On Democrats attempting to resurrect their multi-trillion-dollar tax-and-spending spree:“It seems like Groundhog Day because we’ve been talking about this bad bill that changes names and changes price tags, but the damage it would do to our economy is still devastating. And until the clock strikes midnight on September 30th, nobody can sleep safely because I don’t trust that the House is going to somehow hold any kind of line – their greed surely is going to want to jack up the price tag – but if [Senator] Manchin ultimately agrees to a trillion dollars, that is no compromise.“That’s no moderate ability to kind of stave off damage. That will do tremendous damage to our economy. It’ll drive up inflation, as you pointed out, and I’m sure at some point, the House would take that if that’s the most the House could get. They want to spend $4.5 trillion. They passed that through [Speaker] Pelosi’s House, a few months ago, but they would take a trillion I think if they get it.“I’m glad that they’re fighting amongst themselves but there [are] still a few weeks left and every day you hear about this, you can see how bad it would be for the economy, how much more it would raise prices that are already too high. When you take a trillion dollars out of people’s wallets to spend on Washington, there is never anything good that can come of it.”On Democrats’ destructive policies hurting low-income and middle class families:“We’re just starting to get a lot of those companies to move jobs back to America, after we cut taxes, working with you and President Trump in the White House. When we cut taxes we actually saw companies move jobs back to America by the millions. By the way, we saw [all] income levels do better – lower income levels, especially. We started rebuilding our middle class when we cut taxes.“But if you still don’t believe that, and believe me, Democrats are trying to rewrite history on that every day. Go look at states. Where are the high-tax states? How are they doing? And how are the low-tax states doing? New York, California, liberal Utopia run by Democrats, Illinois, every single local government all the way up to the governor – [a] Democrat with high taxes, crazy regulations, crime out of control, people are leaving those states in droves to go to the lowest tax states [like] Florida, Texas, North Carolina, just look at where people are moving away from and moving to – high taxes destroy jobs, economies, and especially the lower and middle income families.”On the Supreme Court reigning in the EPA’s regulatory overreach:“It’s being fought on a number of different fronts. But Larry, make no mistake that the vagueness, the opaqueness, and then the open hostility against American energy by all of Biden’s agencies, EPA, SEC, through the ESG policies, the Department of Interior, Department of Energy, all of them have anti-American energy policies – shutting down permitting.“Even if you have leases – and they love talking about the thousands of leases – if they don’t give you a permit to actually develop the lease then the lease is worthless. You can’t do anything new with it. If you did something five or 10 years ago, great. Eventually, as we all know, those wells deplete and that’s why you’re always exploring. It’s called exploration for a reason. You’re looking for new opportunities to produce energy and if you can’t get those new permits, which they are not giving right now, then ultimately, you don’t allow America to compete on a world market. And that means OPEC countries, monopoly countries, if you look at these dictatorships, whether it’s Russia, Iran, [or] Venezuela, they are the only ones that control world energy markets and that’s why you have a high price.“If you open up American energy, those countries become less relevant because then we have a free market running energy. We’re the only free market. America is the only free market country that has real vast energy reserves and [President] Biden has shut them off. That’s why we’re paying more at the pump. Everybody knows it. It’s not Putin’s tax. It’s not Putin’s high gas [prices]. Putin’s irrelevant on energy markets if America is open for business. [President] Biden [on] day one shut America down for business on the energy markets. Keystone [pipeline], permits, energy, all these agencies going after American energy. It’s costing families. It’s costing them dearly. They might not even be traveling this summer because they can’t afford the gas prices.”On President Biden not investing in energy production in the Gulf of Mexico: “There are vast reserves in the Gulf [of Mexico]. You can get over a billion barrels from a large fine but it costs you a few billion dollars to start the process, getting your permits, starting to do the exploration, if you ultimately hit oil, it might be seven, eight years before you see the first dollar, so you might have $8 billion invested before you see a dime back and there are big returns you can get, but right now you can’t even go and explore.“They’re not even giving [out] those leases, as you pointed out, in the Gulf of Mexico. And what that means is no energy is being produced long-term in America. People don’t see the ability to invest in America so they’re investing in other places. And it’s cartels and dictatorships that run our energy prices, and they’re happy with high gas prices. We’re not. We want to lower those prices. [President] Biden is keeping the prices high.”