The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee heard testimony from Interior Secretary Deb Haland on Thursday. It’s safe to say it did not go well.
Joe Biden, along with his team, claimed they’re doing all they can to reduce rising gas prices. That’s just not true. As I wrote earlier today reporting on Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s testimony before the Senate, Biden canceled three oil and gas lease sales scheduled in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, thus cutting off millions of acres from possible drilling. On top of that, Granholm’s response was simply to blame Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. She claimed Biden’s policies had nothing to do with the problem.
The Energy Committee put Haaland on the spot: Biden claims that he’s doing everything he can, so what exactly is he doing?
Haaland, along with her assistant Tommy Beaudreau said they were working together on a five year plan.
“It is appropriate for us to take a step, be deliberate as we think about future potential leasing described in the 5-year program,” Beaudreau told Manchin, the committee’s chair. “By the end of June, we’ll take step number two in a three-step process. No decisions about leasing will be made until step number three.”
That answer didn’t appear to satisfy Manchin, the senator from West Virginia who is Democrats’ swing vote on energy and climate legislation.
Manchin told Interior officials they were taking “a lot longer than the deadline” to get their new five-year plan done.
“We’re getting this at the last possible day, the last possible minute, knowing that there’s other steps to go through,” Manchin said. “The timing is not right that you’ve taken as long as you possibly could.”
Haaland indicated that, even though the program proposal will be published on June 30, it will still take 150 days to receive public comments and complete an environmental review before any lease sales can occur.
“I don’t think there is an actual deadline” to begin new offshore leasing, she told Sen. James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma.
“That’s the concern all of us have, actually that there’s no deadline,” Lankford responded. “That the proposal to talk about it is coming on the date it should be done, and that this is going to stretch out for the next 2-3 years of talking about it. We’re trying to figure out when’s the deadline to actually start leasing.”
So, not only didn’t they provide the result they were supposed to by this time, it might even take years to get any action on leases, according to what they were telling the Committee.
Then it got worse.
Senator Joe Manchin, D-WVa., was the Chair of the Committee. He pulled out an Interior Department announcement that stated that he had been told to stop accepting new leases. So, it looks like you’re going to shut everything down, Manchin said to her.
Biden’s Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is having trouble explaining a memo sent by HER to call for the end of all new oil leases.
“I am sorry, and am sitting in this hearing and not ………” pic.twitter.com/bLypsaAt8H
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 19, 2022
Haaland became stuttering, unable to speak. “My God,” Manchin said. “It shuts it down. It shows what your intent is.”
So, not only don’t they have their plan ready when they were supposed to have it in hand, it sounds like the true plan is to shut everything down.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is ridiculously reaching out to Venezuela, when we could produce more oil here — if only Biden allowed it
Senator Bill Cassidy (Republican-La.) asked Haaland one simple question. Was it more eco-friendly for Venezuela to make oil and gas, or the United States?
Q: “Is it more environmentally friendly to develop and produce oil and gas” in the U.S. or in foreign countries, like Venezuela?
Biden Interior Secretary: “I’m not an economist” pic.twitter.com/SrbsceaeO5
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 19, 2022
The answer is a simple one — it’s more environmentally friendly for us to do it. But she doesn’t want to say that–maybe because even the climate excuse doesn’t justify them going around producing it in the U.S. to reach out to Venezuela? But her answer is “I’m not an economist” or a “scientist.” Seriously, how incompetent can she be? She’s not an economist, like Ketanji Brown Jackson isn’t a biologist, so she can’t tell us what a woman is.
Haaland couldn’t even answer some basic questions without aides desperately slipping answers to her during the hearing.
WATCH: Democrat staffers tearfully scribble notes to Deb Haaland for Biden Interior secretary Deb Haaland while she struggles through her Senate testimony pic.twitter.com/pT4a1VO8Xx
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 19, 2022
It is frightening to see the radicalism and incompetence of this team. Are there any Biden employees who are competent? Joe Biden’s entire staff seems to lack the ability or knowledge necessary to understand what they are doing.
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