Seventeen Attorney Generals have written a letter to Senate Majority and Minority leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, voicing their “strong opposition” to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022. 

 

Sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders, the Act is a ham fisted sleight of hand to reintroduce Obama’s failed Clean Power Plan, which the Supreme Court ruled illegal, through what the AG’s call “procedural gamesmanship.” Though that 2015 EPA ruling would have forced states to adopt cap and trade energy policies, the letter maintains that the “misnamed” Energy Independence and Security Act sounds “uncannily” like it. The “hurried and agenda-driven” bill is currently being hustled through Congress without public comment or even committee hearings.

 

The bill amounts to a frontal assault on our federalist system that for over 100 years has allowed states to determine their own resource and utility policies.

 

• It provides “an unrestrained mechanism” for a private company’s takeover of State owned land through the use of eminent domain.

 

• It allows the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to command utilities to construct entirely new transmission facilities whenever and wherever FERC deems necessary.

 

• It authorizes companies to spread costs of transmission infrastructure to residents of other states.

 

These provisions “eviscerate states’ ability to chart their own land-use and energy policies.” In truth, they conclude, “the Act should be renamed the “Sacrificing Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022.”” As should be named all the policies of the Biden administration, which sacrificed the energy independence we as a nation enjoyed as a country only two years ago and now, without even a trace of irony,  “requires that the US be energy independent by 2024.”

 

The proposed legislation is a rubber stamp for the federal government to nationalize energy policy, and to “commandeer companies to construct facilities.” One is hard put to say whether this model more resembles the command economics of communism or fascism, but in practice, it is indistinguishable.

 

The AG’s letter goes on to spell it out clearly: the bill would “permit FERC to authorize massive takings of private lands…displacing and replacing the American farmer with federally-facilitated solar farms, composed of panels manufactured from Chinese-mined minerals from foreign countries.”

 

Additionally, spreading the cost of transmission to other states requires that one state pay for the policies determined by the politicians and bureaucrats of another, allowing companies to charge tariffs for  a “broad range of reasonably anticipated benefits,” ie. supposed climate change mitigation. This provision, the Attorney Generals state, may be used as “a justification for imposing potentially back- breaking costs on residents who may see no true energy benefit whatsoever.”

The Attorney Generals close their letter with a passage worth repeating: “these drastic and draconian changes are being rushed through without committee hearings, markups, and the full debate expected of the world’s greatest deliberative body. This utter lack of transparency is a manifestation of Congress’ “new normal,” under which laws are passed before the several States and their citizens can find out what is in them. Such hurried and agenda-driven laws provide the public no explanation of what the new laws are, why they are necessary, or how they will affect our Nation and the States.”

And this is the “procedural gamesmanship” which has utterly supplanted governance in the halls of Congress, where legislators engage in “rushed backroom deals” instead of the processes and procedures of true representative government.

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Texas Fights Outloud acknowledges the leadership of the states whose AG’s have signed this letter of opposition and signaled to Washington the legal challenges that lie ahead should they ram this legislation through:

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia

We can avert such a costly, divisive, time consuming and wasteful legal battle by heading this off at the pass.

Write our U.S. Senators and tell them in no uncertain terms that the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022 is not only ill advised, it is illegal, and that we categorically reject the threat to our state sovereignty that it poses. We will not allow Washington to nationalize energy policy and to dictate it to Texas. There is a reason we have our own grid, and this bill strikes at the heart of that reason.

If we are genuinely interested in regaining our nation’s energy independence, the path before us is clear. Stop the prosecution of the war on domestic oil and gas. Let Texas do what it does best, supplying our needs at home and helping to meet those abroad.

If we are genuinely interested in our national security, it is obvious that reliance on foreign oil, depletion of our strategic oil reserves, and dependence on China for the minerals and materials required by wind and solar mitigate directly against it.

Neither energy independence nor security will be achieved by forcing our nation and our states to rely on “green” energy strategies that have only proven their insufficiency and unreliability. The conversation this proposal engenders is one we must engage as a nation, but with the unavoidable conclusion that it is, at root, disingenuous.

We urge Senators Cruz and Cornyn to not only reject this proposed legislation out of hand, but to take this opportunity to enjoin the public in the painful but necessary process of unmasking the Green New Deal fraud.

Your constituents deserve no less.

 

Senator Ted Cruz

9901 IH-10W, Suite 950

San Antonio, TX 78230

Phone number: (210) 340-2885

southcentral_texas@cruz.senate.gov

 

 

Senator John Cornyn

600 Navarro

Suite 210

San Antonio, TX 78205

Main: 210-224-7485

https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/contact