SEEC Blasts Extreme Senate Republican ‘Blackout Bill’

Washington, D.C. – The leaders of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC), including Co-Chairs Reps. Doris Matsui, Mike Quigley, and Paul Tonko and Vice Chairs Reps. Don Beyer, Suzanne Bonamici, Sean Casten, Mike Levin, and Chellie Pingree, released the following statement in response to the Senate passage of President Donald Trump’s Big Ugly Blackout Bill (H.R. 1) that destroys American energy security, kills jobs, and sends electricity costs through the roof for American families. 

“Despite stark and repeated warnings from every sector of the American economy, Senate Republicans today ignored all reason and passed their extreme ‘Blackout Bill’. This disastrous legislation will cause more frequent and severe blackouts across the country, drive up household electricity bills by more than $400 a year, and kill hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs. This bill cedes America’s leadership in the industries of the future while giving handouts to the industries of the past. Senate Republicans have betrayed their own constituents and ignored the desperate warnings of American industry and consumers in order to bail out the oil industry and hand out tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. 

“The mere prospect of this bill becoming law has already cost good-paying clean energy manufacturing jobs across the country, but these job losses are just the tip of the iceberg for the real pain that is about to be unleashed. We’ve already seen more than 90,000 clean energy jobs lost or threatened this year, and early reports predict that another 400,000 clean energy jobs will soon follow.

“Clean energy is cheap energy. Unfortunately, Congressional Republicans don’t really care about your electricity bills. Congressional Republicans only care about appeasing Donald Trump. If that means killing American jobs and making energy more expensive to satisfy Trump’s personal grievances against wind turbines and solar panels, so be it. If it means aggressively putting the thumb on the scale for dirtier and more expensive fossil fuel energy sources, even as the oil and gas industry continues to pollute our communities and make our children sick, so be it. They will throw our entire country under the bus just to satisfy President Trump’s whims.

“It’s not too late to stop the madness. We urge our Republican colleagues in the House to see this bill for what it truly is: the wholesale destruction of affordable domestic clean energy production that will lead to an extreme price hike on the American people.”