For months, Democrats have been blaming Republicans for rising energy prices. A Senate vote in the coming days will help make their case.
As lawmakers continue to fight over government funding, Senate Democrats are forcing a vote as soon as this week to terminate President Donald Trump’s “energy emergency” declaration, which gives him broad powers to sidestep environmental reviews and boost his favorite energy sources: oil, gas and coal.
Democrats plan to argue on the Senate floor that it is Trump who has created a crisis by throttling renewable energy sources like wind and solar. And, they say, it’s only going to get worse, a message that is shaping up to be a key midterm campaign theme.
“The real energy emergency — which is the price pressures that we’re seeing — is getting worse all the time,” Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said Friday.
“And that’s what we’re going to paint a picture of — is how their decision to cancel projects; their decision to sit on permits that are normally very straightforward and to politicize that permitting process; their decision to put out stop-work orders — that’s what’s creating the energy emergency.”
Heinrich is leading the legislation, S. J. Res. 71, along with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), after the pair’s first attempt failed along party lines in February.
“President Trump is canceling energy projects all over the country,” Kaine argued in an interview in his office last month. “So now what we’re seeing is Donald Trump is the emergency.”
Under the National Emergencies Act, the president can declare a crisis to, among other things, fast-track the approvals of projects and potentially use eminent domain for production, refining and power generation.
The law allows Congress to review such emergency declarations every six months. Lawmakers can vote to repeal the president’s declaration via simple majority in both chambers.
Democrats are hopeful they can peel off a few Republicans this time around, though it would be a symbolic victory. Trump is certain to veto the resolution were it to reach his desk.
‘Because the president feels like it’
Trump declared a national energy emergency during his first day in office, as promised during on campaign trail.
“Caused by the harmful and shortsighted policies of the previous administration, our Nation’s inadequate energy supply and infrastructure causes and makes worse the high energy prices that devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed-incomes,” he wrote.
Blue state attorneys general promptly sued, arguing the law should be reserved for actual emergencies — “not changes in presidential policy or because the president feels like it.”
Former President Joe Biden also used emergency authorities to accelerate the production of clean energy technology. Democrats say Trump’s favoring of fossil fuels comes at the expense of renewable power, reducing the supply of electrons on the grid at a time of soaring demand.
Courting Republicans
Heinrich on Friday declined to say if he had spoken to any Republicans about possibly supporting the legislation. Not one did last time.
The declaration comes as the Trump administration has canceled Energy Department funding for clean energy projects, issued stop-work orders on nearly complete offshore wind projects and hailed the benefits of oil, gas and coal.
Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who represents the coal state of Wyoming, mirrored the administration’s arguments in continuing to back the emergency declaration.
“It’s not about fossil fuels versus non-fossil fuels,” she said. “It’s about baseload versus intermittent. And I do think he favors baseload energy for a rock-solid reason. Intermittent sources just aren’t going to be adequate to meet our needs.”
She argued the artificial intelligence race will require more energy. “I do think that creates an emergency situation,” she said. “And I think President Trump is justified in making that kind of determination.”
Critics have argued that solar and wind are some of the fastest-growing and cheapest energy sources to deploy and that throttling them will lead to higher prices and reliability problems.
Asked about the impending vote, Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said he thinks about the issue the same way he does other administration actions, like trying to aid struggling coal-fired power generation.
“When we don’t do our work, it opens it up to an executive branch,” he said. “This is why it’s urgent for us as legislators to do our job.”
Reporter Timothy Cama contributed.
