At Senate leadership Press Conference, Daines Slams Biden, Senate Democrats for Plan to Ban Gas Stoves
U.S. SENATE –U.S. Senator Steve Daines today delivered the following remarks at the weekly Republican Senate Leadership press conference slamming the Biden administration for their proposed rule that would ban fifty percent of gas stoves and push their woke green agenda on Montanans.
“You know things are getting bad when a left of center European leader, specifically Germany, is lecturing Senate Democrats about how far left they’ve gone in terms of policies to shut down made-in-America conventional sources of energy and promoting their green agenda.
“The Biden administration and Senate Democrats’ war on American energy still continues despite lectures from the Europeans telling us ‘you can’t do this.’ The President killed the Keystone XL Pipeline that comes right into Montana. We can’t afford that fill up our vehicles and can’t afford to heat our homes. And now the Biden administration is proposing we can’t cook on gas stoves.
“Last fall, the administration started targeting gas stoves. In January, the White House press secretary said that President Biden doesn’t support such a ban. The first of February, the Department of Energy publishes a rule that would ban 96 percent of our gas stoves in the United States. Now when this word came out, of course, there’s been a squawking up here on Capitol Hill and around the country. Now on February 16th, the Department of Energy changes their math and now they say it’s only 50 percent. And for those of you that think there’s another conspiracy that Senator Ernst talked about that the media accuses us of, read it in the DOE’s own publication on their website, that says nearly half of the total gas cooking top market would be illegal under this proposed rule.
“When I was in Europe last year, the Romanian prime minister who was lamenting on policies that were being promoted years ago in Northern Europe, said this…he said, ‘a vision without an action plan is a hallucination.’
“The Democrats are living in a green hallucination. They worship this green religion. And we know their goal here is to get rid of all fossil fuels. I didn’t think I would live to see the day when they want to start banning natural gas. Let’s keep in mind over the next 25 years, global energy demand is going to increase 50 percent from where it is today. We need an additive kind of strategy as it relates to energy, not subtraction. We need all-of-the-above energy because coal, natural gas, oil will continue to be the majority contributor to global energy and American energy for decades to come. As one coal miner in Montana recently said, ‘The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine.’ You can’t burn our current energy bridges until the new bridges are built and working in the future.”
Background:
After a confusing exchange with a Biden administration official about the rule, Daines called on the Biden administration to provide a briefing to members of Congress on the Department of Energy’s proposed rule. In response, DOE actually doubled down on their plan indicating that should this proposed rule become final, about 50 percent of the stoves on the market will not meet the new standards.
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Contact: Matt Lloyd, Rachel Dumke, Blake Kernen