Speaker McCarthy Unveils Key Legislation To ‘Lower Energy Costs,’ Make China ‘Dependent’ On American Natural Gas

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow Thursday that new energy legislation would “lower energy costs” and also assist American allies.

The legislation, dubbed the Lower Energy Costs Act under H.R. 1, would include provisions to increase energy production, reform the permitting process for key projects and streamline America’s energy infrastructure, according to a statement from McCarthy’s office. Elements of the legislation will come from 26 different representatives from the House Transportation, Natural Resources and Energy and Commerce Committees.

“You’re right, the only way you can really curb inflation, you gotta lower energy costs. You named all the different things energy has, but there is more to it. It is not just energy we will do,” McCarthy told Kudlow, a former economic adviser to then-President Donald Trump, during an interview in the Rayburn Room of the U.S. Capitol. “We need to double all the above what we’re producing today. But we need to not just be energy independent, this is about exporting too, to our allies. We should make China dependent on our natural gas.”

President Joe Biden and the White House have often called increased gas prices the “Putin price hike” in the wake of the Feb. 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, but some experts have said Biden’s hostility to fossil fuel production has fueled higher gas prices. Biden also blamed oil companies for the high prices, saying they needed to increase production and pass on savings to customers.

“You’ve got to have pipelines. That brings in safety. You talk about these train wrecks. You know, you don’t want to be moving energy on trains, you want to put them in pipelines,” McCarthy said. “It’s a safer process. You look at Pennsylvania, you look at the shale out there, produce more natural gas, they are not drilling anymore because they don’t have anymore pipelines to send it.”

The Biden administration revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline in January 2021 and canceled an offshore lease sale in May after issuing new regulations for onshore drilling for oil and natural gas.

McCarthy also called for the construction of additional refineries, saying they would be more efficient and cause less pollution. The House speaker also said the legislation would try to ease the permitting process for mining critical minerals needed for electric car production.

Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, which included a tax credit for electric battery production. Despite Biden’s push for more electric vehicles, the Environmental Protection Agency made a determination Jan. 31 that would block the mining of 1.4 billion tons of copper, gold, molybdenum, silver and rhenium in Alaska in order to protect salmon.

“China controls 95% of the processing of critical minerals. They control 90% of minerals… critical minerals themselves,” McCarthy said. “Why would we do that if America is abundant in it? Why would we do that if God blessed us with it? So we’re gonna open it up in an environmentally sound, safe, way that we can mine that we can produce more electric cars but not be beholden to China or any other country.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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