Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) ripped President Joe Biden’s green energy agenda, arguing that the policies made the United States weaker and more dependent on China.
Reschenthaler told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo that the current administration was soft on China and was weakening the country’s energy policies. He said it could lead to higher prices for U.S. residents. His comments come after the House passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act on Wednesday.
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“It’s making us much more reliant, especially when you look at the Green New Deal elements that the Democrats are trying to pass,” Reschenthaler said. “The solar panels, the windmills, they rely on critical minerals that China has a virtual monopoly on with the processing and mining. It’s making us more reliant on Communist China while, at the same time, China continues to increase its CO2 emissions. They’re bringing one or two coal-fired power plants every week.”
“While our energy grid gets more fragile and our energy gets more expensive, China’s gets less expensive as they have more energy abundance through gaining coal-fired power plants. That’s going to make everything more expensive – consumer goods, anything involving petrochemicals, it’s going to make transportation costs more expensive. We get weaker as China gets stronger. Democrats need to realize that,” he continued.
Congressional Democrats reintroduced the Green New Deal resolution last week, and they published new guidance aimed at shaping the billions of dollars in clean energy spending under the Inflation Reduction Act.
Reschenthaler said the administration needs to take a closer look at China overall instead of just as a military powerhouse that rivals the U.S. or as a rival on energy.
“We also have to look at what they’re doing culturally with TikTok, Confucius Institutes, and with the secret police stations they have here in the United States to make sure that they’re cracking down on China expatriates,” Reschenthaler said. “It’s a big problem. I wish the Democrats realized it. I wish that Joe Biden realized it. We have to take immediate steps.”
The House narrowly passed Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) debt ceiling bill on Wednesday in a 217-215 vote. Four Republicans voted against the measure, which was unveiled last week and proposed raising the debt ceiling over the next year either by $1.5 trillion or until March 31, 2024 — whichever comes first.
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The Limit, Save, Grow Act seeks to cool inflation and limit government spending by reducing discretionary funds to pre-pandemic levels and capping budget increases at 1% each year, among other provisions.
Its passage comes after days of marathon meetings and hourslong deliberations among Republicans to create legislation that could give McCarthy leverage as he attempts to strike a deal with Biden.
