Washington, DC…Congressman McClintock today delivered the following remarks on the House floor. The remarks can be viewed below and a transcript follows: We all know the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Grifters convince an emperor that they’re expert tailors who weave a cloth so fine that only the virtuous can see it. The emperor wraps himself in nothing and parades the streets as all the townspeople compete to signal their own virtue by proclaiming how beautiful the material is – even though their own common sense tells them otherwise. This scheme is successful until a little boy who knows better states the obvious.

For two years, we were told by the experts that they could stop Covid-19, if everyone did exactly as they commanded. “I AM science,” as one put it. They quashed debate within the medical community and ridiculed, censored and fired any dissenters. Looking back, we can clearly see what a self-destructive folly they produced. Study after study now confirms the obvious: that the mask mandates, school closures, home detention orders and business closures had virtually no impact on the virus, but they did appalling damage to the economy, seriously harmed children in ways we are still cataloging, and cost untold lives due to suicides, drug and alcohol overdoses, delayed health screenings and treatments and poverty related deaths.

This recent, tragic experience should warn us all to be much more skeptical of surrendering common sense to so-called experts, and of suppressing free debate over what science actually tells us.

Which brings us to the Democrats’ ongoing and escalating war on fossil fuels. The road they have placed us on leads to a bleak future of unaffordable energy, rolling blackouts, empty shelves and increasingly brutal rationing of every watt of electricity and drop of gasoline that we once took for granted.

Gasoline prices are already the highest ever seen in this country as we have discouraged production. Electricity prices are skyrocketing, pushed by the crushing cost of renewables. Utilities across the country are now warning of summer blackouts because renewable mandates have destabilized the electricity grid.

Joe Biden and the Democrats promised to wage war on fossil fuels, and they have succeeded. On his first day in office, he cancelled the Keystone Pipeline, which should today have been completed and be delivering 830,000 barrels of oil a day into American markets. He cancelled oil and gas exploration on federal lands. Just last month, he withdrew one million acres of land from exploration and production in oil-rich Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

And he blames Vladimir Putin? Under the pro-growth policies of the Trump Administration, America didn’t need Putin’s oil. We were energy independent for the first time in our life-times. We were producing more oil than Russia and even Saudi Arabia. The day the Democrats took office, gasoline was averaging $2.39 a gallon.

Today, sky-high fuel prices are aggravating supply chain breakdowns and adding to consumer prices.

Acreage once devoted to growing corn for food is now used to produce ethanol – which requires trading an entire acre of corn for just 551 gallons of ethanol.

And the irony is, at a time when these green new deal policies can’t guarantee enough electricity to keep the lights on this summer – at any price – these Democrat elitists are telling families to buy electric cars. Where do they think the electricity for their electric cars comes from? Eighty percent comes from fossil fuels – that they are ruthlessly shutting down.

The excuse for all of this, of course, is to stop global warming. But they cannot account for why it is that there have been periods throughout paleo history when temperatures have been much higher – and much lower – than they are today. Nor do they account for the infinitely more powerful natural forces that shape our constantly changing climate.

The blind reliance on handpicked experts and the suppression of dissent in our approach to Covid cost lives and destroyed the most prosperous economic expansion in our lifetimes. But its excesses pale in comparison with what the Green Left is now doing to our society. The pain and damage we are feeling today is just the first bitter taste of what is to come if they prevail.

Of one thing we can be certain: Whether or not we destroy our nation’s prosperity by continuing the Democrats’ war on fossil fuels, the earth will continue to warm and cool as it has for billions of years. The only question we can answer is whether ours will be a future of abundance or scarcity, prosperity or poverty, comfort or misery.

Congressman Tom McClintock represents California’s 4th Congressional District.

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House Floor Remarks
Congressman Tom McClintock
June 23, , 2022