by Pat Fallon
The left-wing assault on American energy was just dealt a swift defeat by the United States Supreme Court. And President Donald Trump’s confirmations to the bench paved the way for it to happen.
Never in my life would I think that gas prices would rise so steeply in such a short period of time that stations would run out of space on the pump screen to display the price. But the Biden Administration’s assault on American energy is simply unprecedented. They will try to pass the blame, but the American people know what’s happening. Green New Deal advocates are pushing for a great energy reset in America, and they don’t care how much it hurts you.
Arguably, gas and oil are the most visible indicators of the Left’s efforts to fundamentally alter U.S. energy policies. But the Supreme Court just handed down a case that claps back at the Environmental Protection Agency’s deeply flawed position that it can unilaterally govern energy companies in the name of climate justice.
Government missteps and mismanagement (or even worse, purposeful woke management) plunged America into the energy crisis we face today. The EPA, under a strategy engineered by the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), sought to hijack companies for the purpose of advancing progressive policies that harm Americans. When the Trump Administration tried to fight back, lower courts argued that the EPA was essentially sovereign, with power to regulate carbon-emitting industries with virtually no limit.
The Trump Administration immediately recognized the overreach of CPP and enacted the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule to permanently override the Obama Administration’s radical plan. The Trump Administration’s rule empowered states to write their own plans for emissions reductions and to provide modern, reliable, and affordable energy to all Americans.
Upon the creation of federal agencies, largely around the era of FDR’s New Deal, people began to invest in the idea of the “administrative state.” In practice, federal agencies, which are not as accountable to voters as Congress is, can assume unto themselves legislative, executive, and judicial powers to carry out the directives of the executive branch. When federal agencies such as the EPA stretch ambiguous phrasing of laws to advance some radical agenda, they are abusing the statutory authority delegated to them by Congress, crippling American energy innovation, crushing markets, and trampling the bedrock of the 10th Amendment.
EPA essentially wants to play God with energy, and the American people are suffering for it.
If Obama’s plan had been implemented, not only would it have robbed the states of their rights, it would have cost American families $600 billion in disposable income, would have killed 226,000 jobs annually, and would have cost the U.S. economy $50 billion a year.
The EPA wants to operate with essentially no oversight or accountability, and it also wants to select which sources of energy they think work better for Americans. Just imagine how much worse the energy crisis would become if the EPA prioritized wind and solar over coal and natural gas at a time when gas prices remain at $5, $6, and in some cases, $9 a gallon.
In a resounding victory for American energy independence, however, the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA, rejected the agency’s actions to manipulate the energy sector and exasperate the energy crisis with a progressive climate agenda.
That decision never would have been possible without the nominations President Trump made to the Supreme Court. Repeatedly since their confirmations, dangerously radical attempts to alter the fabric of our nation have been met with swift rebuttal from justices placed on the bench by Donald Trump. These justices value the Constitution and our founding principles over and against dangerous misinterpretations by judicial activists who view them as fungible and subject to arbitrary, contemporary interpretation.
The legacy left by Trump’s administration continues to have an impact on American lives every day. And because of that, American businesses and families have been uplifted and freed from the heavy hand of unaccountable government bureaucracy.
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U.S. Representative Pat Fallon is a Republican member of the House of Representatives serving the 4th Congressional District in Texas.
