Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Mr. JAMES. Madam Chair, this is not political theater, far from it. This is accountability to the American people.

I rise today in support of this amendment to reduce the salary of Secretary Granholm to $1 because I cannot make her pay us back.

The job of the Secretary of Energy is to secure American energy independence, but she is not securing American energy independence. She is depleting it, and she should be held accountable to the people for failing to deliver on her job.

You see, Madam Speaker, before Ms. Granholm was Energy Secretary, she promoted the same failed policies while serving as Governor of Michigan and presided over what is now known as Michigan's Lost Decade, a legacy that we are still paying for at home.

She presided over the mass exodus of our jobs and our children from our State. She presided over the crippling of our economy, foreclosures of so many of our homes, and the closing of our businesses.

She embarrassed us with the RASCO fiasco when she offered $9 million in tax credits to promote a job program that actually went to a convicted embezzler who lived out of a trailer.

You know what she did when she was done gutting and embarrassing our State, Madam Speaker? She left. She got on a plane and headed for California where she took a faculty position at Berkeley while leaving Michiganders at home struggling in the snow.

Madam Chair, while this amendment today is not about her time in Michigan, past behavior is the best indicator of future performance.

We should be appalled but not surprised by the same malpractice, malfeasance, and mistreatment of the office that she assumes currently, and she has inflicted serious pain on the American people and jeopardizes our American independence moving forward.

Since this administration took office, Madam Chair, we have gone from energy independence to energy reliance on dictators and despots around the world.

Secretary Granholm sold off our Strategic Petroleum Reserve and sold out Americans and our national security. All the worse, she went on television and laughed in our faces just before gas prices hit their peak.

The American people's pain is their plan, Madam Chair. They are making gas unaffordable and are trading away our national resources to China, our number one adversary, all so they can implement their pipe dream of forced EV transition. I won't call it treason, but many in my district have.

The policies she is seeking to impose, the billions of dollars in penalties for our autos through her EV mandates would crater the number one industry in Michigan.

We do not fear the future, but we demand to be a part of it. Madam Chair, the consequence of her failures is the reason folks in my district are standing on a picket line right now.

The unrealistic, untimely, and unjust forced EV mandates she supports is building the Chinese middle class on the backs of middle-class families in Michigan and around America.

It is time for her to pay, and Congress is holding her accountable. This is the essence of what the Article I branch of government should be doing. It is holding an out-of-control administration accountable to the people. She failed in Michigan, and we will not let her fail America.

This is a warning to the American people that policies that hurt them will stop with the 118th Congress.

These policies have not worked anywhere. They have tried and they have failed. In the real world, failure means your employer takes your pay. This town needs to start operating a little bit more like the real world.

Madam Chair, that is why I support this resolution, and I encourage all of my colleagues to support it as well.

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Mr. JAMES. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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