Count Oklahoma Congressman Josh Brecheen among the hard-right Republicans who are in open revolt over Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s deal with President Biden to raise the government debt ceiling and set federal spending limits.
It’s a deal that included approval of the long-delayed $6.6 billion Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline in West Virginia. But if Rep. Brecheen and others opposed to the deal, vote it down, the gas pipeline might again be at risk.
Brecheen came out Tuesday against H.R. 3746 as it currently stands and Biden’s energy plan is one of the reasons he opposes it.
“I cannot in good conscience vote for 1.3 percent of the deal we passed several weeks ago, using the year one savings as best measure of real impact,” he declared in a released statement.
““Ronald Reagan famously said, ‘if you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later.’ The Biden-McCarthy agreement only includes approximately 1.3 percent or less ($12 billion) of the real year one savings that House Republicans passed several weeks ago with The Limit, Save, Grow Act (which achieved approx. $900 billion saved in year one).”
The Oklahoma congressman said to not at least see Biden and the Democrats meet Republicans half way on spending cuts and policy reform is “a missed opportunity that a nation heading towards a fiscal cliff cannot afford.”
“I cannot in good conscious vote for a deal that continues to kick the can down the road at the expense of our kids and grandkids. This is a huge missed opportunity to turn our nation away from a fiscal cliff and I urge my colleagues to vote NO on the Biden-McCarthy agreement as it currently stands,” Brecheen concluded.
Brecheen says the Limit, Save, Grow Act passed by Republicans was a responsible bill because it would cut wasteful spending by $1 trillion in year one and $4.8 trillion over ten years. But the deal reached by McCarthy includes a two-year freeze in spending in exchange for adding $4 trillion to the nation’s $31.5 trillion national debt.
“Unlike The Limit, Save, Grow Act, the agreement also fails to claw back President Biden’s green energy tax credits that were part of the so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ which Goldman Sachs estimates would cost taxpayers $1.2 trillion,” added Rep. Brecheen.
“The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates these green energy tax credits will make 60 percent of our electric grid dependent on solar and wind by 2050—it is only 12 percent now. This will be devastating for the oil and natural gas industry and the state of Oklahoma, as we are a top five leader in oil and natural gas. If we fail to roll back these tax credits now, it may be too late to turn back the clock.”
Brecheen isn’t alone in opposing the agreement.
“Not one Republican should vote for this bill,” Representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican and influential member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, said at a news conference outside the Capitol reported the New York Times.
“We will continue to fight it today, tomorrow, and no matter what happens, there’s going to be a reckoning about what just occurred unless we stop this bill by tomorrow.”