Kaine & Heinrich Announce Timing of Senate Vote on Their Legislation to Stop Trump’s Cost-Raising Energy Agenda

WASHINGTON, D.C. –U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) and U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Ranking Member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, announced that the Senate will vote today on theirlegislationto challenge President Donald Trump’s radical, cost-raising, job-killing energy agenda. The legislation would repeal the national energy emergency declaration Trump has used to give Big Oil handouts. Kaine and Heinrich previously filed thislegislationin February, but Senate Republicansblockedit from passage. Any senator can challenge a presidential declaration of national emergency every six months.
“President Trump told Big Oil donors that if they cut a $1 billion check to his campaign, he’d give them everything they want on day one of his presidency. Then, within hours of his inauguration, he declared a sham ‘energy emergency’ to put his thumb on the scale for those donors and hamstring other affordable energy sources,”said Kaine. “It turns out Trump himself is the energy emergency—energy prices are through the roof and hundreds of thousands of good-paying clean energy jobs are in serious jeopardy because of federal funding he yanked. I’m glad to team up with Senator Heinrich to give every senator the opportunity to stand with the American people who want lower energy costs and good jobs by challenging Trump’s corrupt energy agenda.”
“Now more than ever, we need more energy, not less, to power our grid and our communities. Instead of working to create solutions and giving relief to Americans who are already cash-strapped, Donald Trump is creating an affordability crisis and waging war on American-made energy—canceling hundreds of clean energy projects, killing high-quality jobs, and skyrocketing energy costs. It must stop,”said Heinrich.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to grant his Administration new powers to promote fossil fuels, bypass bedrock environmental laws, and block clean energy projects. Specifically, Trump’s emergency allows officials to oversee the accelerated approval of fossil fuel projects, including oil drilling rigs and pipelines, extend aging coal power plants, and explore infringing Americans’ private property rights for the “siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation” of non-solar and non-wind-related energy production.
Since August 2022, Democrat-led investments have created an American-made energy boom, spurring the highest levels of factory construction in U.S. history with more than 400,000 new jobs announced across the country. However, Trump’s war on American-made energy andRepublicans’ rollbackof provisions in theInflation Reduction Actwillkill these new jobs,weaken the power grid, increase our reliance on foreign energy, and raise families’ annual energy bills by up to18 percentin total household energy costs over the next five years. Across the country,more than 60,000 jobshave already been lost or threatened, and more than $440 billion in private investments are at risk. By 2030, the United States’ GDP is expected to decline by$130 billion each yearas new energy development and advanced manufacturing decline under the Republican bill. The Trump Administration has also canceled billions in clean energy projects.
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