House Energy Action Team - 70+ Republicans Who, As Always, Will Do Anything To Prop Up Fossil Fuels
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In recent weeks, the group has grown to include more than 70 Republicans from across the country. It has hosted GOP member telephone briefings with Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt as well as energy executives on the impact of the crisis. And it has been aggressively pushing pro-energy-relief ideas to the Trump administration. "The team has always been around, but not nearly as active as we've been lately," added Scalise, who was involved with one of the earlier versions of the group when he first came to Congress in 2008.
But senior House Natural Resources Committee Democrat Jared Huffman of California said the latest version of HEAT is no different from what it has been in recent years. "We've all seen this movie too many times to think that it's anything different than the same old fossil fuel agenda. When they talk, the fossil fuel industry's lips are moving every single time," he said.
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Critics say they have not seen many of HEAT's policy ideas come to fruition. For example, neither royalty relief nor filling the SPR has been implemented, while the group's criticism of banks over lending to energy firms recently landed Brouillette in hot water when he compared it to racial redlining (Energywire, May 19).
And many green groups agree with Huffman that there is little difference between the 2020 iteration and previous groups. "While many things quickly change in Washington, one constant remains: congressional Republicans' efforts to prop up the fossil fuel industry," said Melinda Piece, legislative director for the Sierra Club. "If they actually cared about America's energy future, they'd be working to help the nearly 600,000 workers in clean energy who just lost their job due to the pandemic."
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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063182593