McConnell Urges Support for Bipartisan American Energy Innovation Act
‘On the Senate floor, we’ll pick up where we left off last week: Considering a comprehensive set of updates to the way our nation approaches energy efficiency, security, and innovation… From grid security and workforce training to energy storage and carbon capture, the Senate has a chance to pass a number of important updates to energy policy on a wide bipartisan basis. I hope and anticipate the Senate will be able to process amendments and then pass the American Energy Innovation Act this week.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding the American Energy Innovation Act:
‘On the Senate floor, we’ll pick up where we left off last week: Considering a comprehensive set of updates to the way our nation approaches energy efficiency, security, and innovation.
‘As Chairman Murkowski pointed out last week, it’s been about 12 years since the last such package. And since then, America’s energy sector has undergone some real changes.
‘New technology has opened new doors for energy production, but also presented new threats to our electrical grid and other critical infrastructure.
‘Even at a time when a strong job market has continued to bring Americans off the sidelines, the domestic energy sector has outpaced the economy as a whole in job creation.
‘And increased access to our abundant domestic reserves has unleashed American energy on the international market. In fact, the Department of Energy has predicted the United States will become a net exporter of energy this year for the first time since 1953.
‘Now, over the past twelve years, we’ve seen plenty of attempts to intervene in this evolution of the American energy sector.
‘Under the last administration, we saw an anti-domestic-energy mindset that manifested in proposals like the so-called “Clean Power Plan.” That would have buried domestic energy in a tangle of stifling red tape and would have jeopardized more than a hundred thousand American jobs. The working families I represent in Kentucky faced that threat head-on.
‘Even more recently, we saw Democratic Party standard-bearers roll out a far-left proposal that would ban affordable forms of domestic power and let Washington micromanage everything from Americans’ jobs to their cars to their homes. And we saw only a small number of our Senate Democratic colleagues able to vote against this radical proposal.
‘That is the wrong way to think about American energy dominance. Fortunately, thanks to the dedicated work of our colleagues on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the bipartisan bill before us is the right way to go about it.
‘The legislation before us now includes provisions and input from nearly three-fourths of this body. From grid security and workforce training to energy storage and carbon capture, the Senate has a chance to pass a number of important updates to energy policy on a wide bipartisan basis.
‘I hope and anticipate the Senate will be able to process amendments and then pass the American Energy Innovation Act this week.’
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