OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The Republican-controlled House has passed a bipartisan bill aimed at preventing the Biden administration from continuing to use the federal bureaucracy to ban or severely limit the use of a growing range of home appliances, all in the name of ‘combatting’ climate change.
“I am saddened that we would need such a bill,” said Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), sponsor of the “Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act,” in a statement following the bill’s passage. “However, as we have experienced under this administration, the Department of Energy has unleashed an avalanche of new regulations for household products, including stoves, dishwashers, washing machines, showers, toilets, water heaters, air conditioners, heat pumps, and furnaces.
“No government bureaucrat should ever scheme to take away Americans’ appliances in the name of a radical environmental agenda, yet that is exactly what we have seen under the Biden Administration. I was proud to lead the House Republican effort to protect our gas stoves, and I am proud to again lead this effort to protect our home appliances,” she added.
The legislation introduces three key requirements: First, any new energy efficiency standards must be cost-effective. Second, the proposal mandates that new standards must result in actual energy or water savings. Lastly, the bill prohibits the federal government from banning any household appliance based on the type of fuel it uses.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) ripped the administration’s “rush to green agenda,” which she said is “out of touch” with the priorities of everyday Americans.
The Biden administration is waging war on American energy, and this war is making its way into Americans’ homes.
The administration is doubling down on unaffordable appliance mandates—which is why we're leading on H.R. 6921. Watch: pic.twitter.com/Y8oYpDZNJe
— CathyMcMorrisRodgers (@cathymcmorris) May 7, 2024
According to a summary of the bill, if enacted, it would grant the DOE the authority to “grant a petition to revoke or amend energy conservation standards if it finds that the standards (1) result in additional costs to consumers, (2) do not result in significant conservation of energy or water, (3) are not technologically feasible, and (4) result in a product (e.g., gas stoves) not being commercially available in the United States to all consumers.”
It also would require all new or modified regulations to be ” technologically feasible and economically justified,” according to the summary.
Meanwhile, the financial divide between the country’s elites and the vast majority of Americans has dramatically widened during President Joe Biden’s term, and it has the potential to dramatically and negatively impact his reelection bid, according to a January report.
As noted by Just the News, the finding was laid bare in a new survey by Rassmussen Reports, which “also found the most highly educated voters with advanced degrees are liberal-leaning, and their policy positions are at odds with the rest of the electorate.”
The outlet added:
There were 1,000 members of the “elite” interviewed September 11-26, 2023, and September 14-29 of 2023 for the survey.
The poll defined elites as “those having a postgraduate degree, a household income of more than $150,000 annually, and living in a zip code with more than 10,000 people per square mile. Approximately 1% of the total U.S. population meets these criteria.”
In the survey of 1,000 elites, 73% identified as Democrats, while 14% identified as Republicans. The study also encompassed adults who had attended Ivy League colleges or other prestigious private schools such as Northwestern, Duke, Stanford, and the University of Chicago, Just the News reported.
Furthermore, approximately half of those categorized as “elites” had attended one of these schools, as indicated in the Committee to Unleash Prosperity’s report on the findings, which was published on Friday under the title “Them vs. U.S.”
The outlet noted that comparison results for registered voters came from “independent surveys of 1,000 registered voters, each conducted between May and September 2023.” It asked if respondents’ financial situations were “getting better or worse these days.”
“Only about 20% of all Americans say they believe their finances are getting better now. But among the elite, that number more than triples to 74% who say they are better off,” the report said.
