Below are Ranking Member Comer’s remarks as prepared for delivery.
Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney. I thank the witnesses for their willingness to testify before the Committee today.
It is unfortunate that Chairwoman Maloney refuses to hold a hearing on the skyrocketing energy prices impacting all Americans. In November we wrote Chairwoman Maloney to request a hearing with Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to discuss these issues, but we still haven’t gotten a response.
Instead, we are here again so Democrats can attack an industry that provides good-paying jobs for American workers and energy for all Americans.
The Oversight Committee should focus on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. Not investigating the implementation of pledges made by private companies that don’t even go in effect for almost 30 years.
We should conduct real oversight of the Biden Administration’s disastrous policies that have led to surging gas prices and inflation. However, the Democrats are not interested.
Last month, Committee Republicans hosted a joint forum with the Congressional Western Caucus to discuss the impacts of the Biden Administration’s energy policies that have failed the American people.
We spent a good deal of time speaking about solutions to these problems, and I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle were able to see how their radical Green New Deal policies are hurting all Americans.
The hearing today is now a two-part hearing. The first panel will be comprised of so-called experts who have studied the climate change pledges proposed by oil and gas companies and their impact on climate change. The second panel will be board of directors from the four companies who appeared before this Committee on October 28th of last year.
At what point will Democrats support energy independence for our country?
At what point will the Democrats stop attacking American industry?
Committee Democrats claim these companies are not complying with the Committee’s investigation. That is not true.
The companies along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute have provided over 400,000 pages of documents thus far and their leadership answered questions for six hours in the last hearing. But apparently that’s not good enough.
Even after producing hundreds of thousands of documents and answering questions all day, Democrats issued subpoenas after our last hearing because their investigation hasn’t turned up anything.
No matter what these companies do, it will never be enough to please the Democrats. The sole focus of this investigation is to put these companies out of business.
Today, I look forward to speaking with the Minority witness, Katie Tubb from the Heritage Foundation, about the consequences of the Biden Administration’s failed energy policies.
This Administration is clearly not committed to promoting an expansive energy solution in America when President Biden says he has no immediate plan to address rising gasolines prices.
And just in the past year, President Biden singlehandedly shutdown the critically important Keystone XL pipeline, placed a moratorium on oil and gas production on federal lands, and enacted policies that increased individual energy costs for American citizens.
Simply put, President Biden’s policies raise electricity costs for the American people and put American energy companies at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world.
Just a few years ago, the United States was experiencing a boom in domestic energy production. We even became a strong exporter of oil and natural gas which allowed us to compete on the global stage. Unfortunately, President Biden’s policies threaten the jobs and investment that hardworking Americans spent so long creating.
It is critical that this Committee examines the more pressing concerns of the American people. Concerns about inflation rising to a 40-year high, gas prices costing a dollar more per gallon than last year, and heating bills rising 54 percent this winter.
The Biden Administration is leading us down a dangerous path at a time when our energy independence is more crucial than ever.
I hope that we can move on from the demonization of private companies and instead focus the Committee’s attention on combating the ever-increasing number of crises the Biden Administration has created.
Thank you again to the witnesses, and I yield back.
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