Energy Coalition: Big Ugly Bill ‘an all-out-war on the American dream’

The House Energy Coalition decries final passage of President Donald Trump’s Republican Budget Bill (H.R. 1) as the ultimate betrayal of the working families of American and an all-out assault on children’s futures.

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 of Virginia, Suzanne Bonamici, Sean Casten, Mike Levin and Chellie Pingree, said last week that Congressional Republicans followed each other off the budgetary cliff and lost respectable claim to fiscal responsibility.

“This big betrayal of a bill jacks up household energy bills by more than $400 a year, adds more than $4 trillion to the national debt, and wipes out 1.5 million American jobs over the next decade, all for the sake of tax breaks and handouts for Trump’s billionaire donors,” the leaders said in a statement.

According to the SEEC, Trump campaigned on cutting energy costs in half for all Americans, however, the Republican Rate Hike bill greenlights sky-high increases in electricity bills.

“With electricity demand climbing and prices already rising faster than inflation, now is the time to produce more cheap, American-made energy, not less. And yet, Republicans’ partisan crusade against cheap, clean energy is projected to kill more than half of all the new clean energy projects over the next decade, undermining our energy security and setting the stage for a true energy crisis. Republicans are stuck living in the past, propping up outdated and expensive fossil fuels at the expense of American families.”

The SEEC leaders pointed out that Trump and Republicans claim to want to put America first, yet their budget bill is designed to send American manufacturing jobs overseas.

“Our adversaries are celebrating today as America abandons the fastest growing sector of the global economy. More than a million American jobs and billions of dollars in private investments will be offshored to China, but at least America’s billionaires will be well taken care of.”

The Republican Rate Hike puts billionaires and polluters ahead of every day Americans, as far as the SEEC is concerned.

“It will be the biggest transfer of wealth this country has seen in decades. This bill is an all-out-war on the American dream, as Republicans ensure an affordable and healthy life is increasingly out of reach for the average American family. Republicans will soon have to answer for this historic betrayal of the American people.”

The SEEC is a coalition of 100 members of the U.S. House of Representatives that was founded in January 2009 to be a focused, active, and effective coalition for advancing policies that address climate change, promote clean energy innovation and domestic manufacturing, develop renewable energy resources, create family-sustaining clean jobs, protect our nation’s air, water, and natural environment, and promote environmental justice.