High Energy Costs Hurt Those Most Vulnerable

Floor Speech

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Mr. OBERNOLTE. Madam Speaker, I fear that the recent actions by the administration to end energy development on Federal land will come at an extremely high cost to the people of the United States, and that cost will be borne disproportionately by the segment of our population who can least afford to pay it.

As an example, I offer my home State of California, which, according to the United States Census Bureau, has the highest rate of poverty of any State in the country. That poverty rate is driven in no small part by the extremely high cost of energy in California.

To take those misguided policies and extend them to the rest of the country would be an abdication of our responsibility to protect the most vulnerable segment of our population, the poor and the working poor, on whose backs the burden of higher energy costs will be felt most keenly.

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