Refrigerator Freedom Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, just like our debate on the last bill, there is no reason for the House to be debating this bill today.

It already passed as part of the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act in May, and yet House Republicans are wasting all of our time by bringing it up again, and it is just another example of why they can't govern.

We are here now to debate H.R. 7637, the Refrigerator Freedom Act. That is right. Republicans are fighting to give refrigerators freedom. You don't hear them fighting for the same thing for American women. In fact, Republicans are trying to strip away a woman's freedom when it comes to reproductive healthcare, pushing nationwide abortion bans.

Talk about misplaced priorities. I can't imagine a more misplaced priority than this bill today.

This bill, along with the other anti-efficiency bills pushed by Republicans, are bad for Americans. It robs Americans of savings on the monthly home energy bills and ignores that even the appliance manufacturing industry supports these efficiency standards.

I am going to repeat that. The industry supports these efficiency standards, so why are you trying to repeal them?

This bill will increase energy bills for American families. H.R. 7637 targets DOE's recently finalized refrigerator efficiency standards. The bill adds burdensome and vague language to the standard setting process and creates unattainable metrics for the enforcement of standards.

If this bill becomes law, the Department of Energy will be unable to enforce its recently finalized consensus-based efficiency standards.

When setting appliance standards, DOE already has to ensure that the standards are economically justifiable, technologically feasible, and result in energy savings. That is required under the existing bipartisan law. Just like the last standard that Republicans targeted with dishwashers, the refrigerator standard is a result of a consensus agreement between the appliance manufacturing industry, efficiency advocates, and consumer advocates, meaning that everyone supports the standard except for the Republicans here today.

It is easy to understand why. Refrigerator standards haven't been updated in over a decade, so it was time to revisit them, and this new standard is projected to save Americans more than $36 million over 30 years. That is a significant savings to American families, and yet House Republicans are so comfortable of robbing them of these savings.

Models that meet the new standards are already on the market, so the standards are certainly achievable. The problem with this bill is that it threatens the Department of Energy's ability to do its job. It enables future administrations to chip away at efficiency standards and muddies the process so much that implementation of new standards is threatened.

This bill includes the same harmful provision that prohibits DOE from enforcing new or existing standards if they increase upfront costs even marginally.

It totally disregards a significant savings associated with energy efficient appliances that Americans see firsthand on their monthly energy bills in the months and years after they purchase the new appliance. It also ignores the fact that the Department of Energy already has a robust process to evaluate cost and savings.

In the last debate, I mentioned Project 2025, this shadowy effort by Trump administration officials and those who would staff a second Trump administration to implement far-right policies.

A lot of Republicans claim that they don't know anything about Project 2025. I think even President Trump said that. They don't want to implement some of its ideas, they claim, but this bill on the floor today just shows how phony that claim is.

The fact of the matter is, these bills, along with the other energy bills that Republicans have passed this Congress, are Project 2025. House Republicans and their leader, Donald Trump, don't just know about Project 2025, they love it. They want to pass it. They have passed it already in many aspects. They are actively working right now as we debate this bill on this floor to make Project 2025 the law of the land.

This bill is part of an orchestrated campaign not just to make you pay more at the pump and on your electric bills, but to bring America back to not just the 20th century, but the 1800s, and I oppose that.

Mr. GOLDMAN of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for the time and for his leadership and clarity on what is truly important and what is not.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate the Republican's national appliance protection day and this specific bill, the Refrigerator Freedom Act.

That is right. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are using their majority and our precious floor time to protect kitchen appliances.

They are not trying to protect women's reproductive freedom. No. They are actually trying to take away a woman's freedom to control her own body.

They are not trying to protect voting rights so that every eligible voter can vote. No. This week we actually will also be voting on a bill that is trying to make it more difficult for poor and rural Americans to vote.

They are not trying to protect Americans' freedom to be who they want to be and marry whomever they want. No. Their Project 2025 platform intends to erase marriage equality for all Americans.

They are not trying to protect our children from their new leading cause of death in this country, guns. Nope. They are trying to protect every Americans' right to turn a semiautomatic weapon of war into an even deadlier automatic weapon of war.

That is right. Instead of reproductive freedom, Republicans are focused on refrigerator freedom.

In closing, I do want to give my friends on the other side of the aisle credit for one thing: They are certainly consistent. Just as they want to take our country back to the 1950s where White Christian men were in complete control, they also want to take our appliance technology back to the 1950s, as well.

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Mr. PALLONE. Castor), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.
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Mr. PALLONE. Strickland).

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, in closing, we have had a number of arguments that have been made today on the other side of the aisle, but one that is really infuriating to me, and it should be to everyone, in my opinion, is this Republican argument for freedom of appliance choice.

Let the people choose. This is what the Republicans say. They want choice when it comes to refrigerators and dishwashers. Let the people choose what goes into their homes and keep the government's hands off it.

That Republican argument of freedom of choice with refrigerators and dishwashers doesn't hold when it comes to more important issues, life or death issues, like women's reproductive rights.

Choice goes out the window for them when we talk about women's reproductive rights. Small government goes out the window. The right to decide and do what is best for you simply goes out the window.

With the repeal of Roe v. Wade, the systematic dismantling of women's reproductive rights across the country and the attacks on IVF show that Republicans are only serious about choice when it comes to things like appliances. This bill shows us where Republican priorities really are.

I mentioned several times today Project 2025. President Trump says it is not his idea, it is The Heritage Foundation, but the reality is that what the Republicans are trying to do today is implement Project 2025 when it comes to efficiency standards for appliances, which is in Project 2025.

Let me tell you some of the other things that are in Project 2025: A complete ban on abortions without exceptions, a ban on contraceptives, additional tax breaks for corporations, elimination of unions and worker protections, raise the retirement age, cut Social Security, cut Medicare, end the Affordable Care Act, raise prescription drug prices, eliminate the Department of Education, end climate protection, end marriage equality, defund the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and most importantly, because it relates to what they are doing today, eliminate Federal agencies like the FDA, the EPA, NOAA, and many, many more.

Now, one of the most important aspects of Project 2025 is to gut any consumer protections and let the large corporations do whatever they want. I said that Project 2025 takes us back to the 1800s. If you go back to the 1800s, there were no protections for food or for drugs. Consumer be damned. We don't care. We will sell whatever, fake medicine, fake food that is going to kill you. It doesn't matter. That is not the Federal Government's role.

That is what the advocates of Project 2025 believe. They don't believe there should be any standards, any regulation for anything, for that matter. Consumer be damned.

Now, there are a lot of misleading statements that were made today about the refrigerator efficiency standards just as there were about the dishwasher standards earlier.

I just want to set the record straight before I conclude. DOE finalized refrigerator standards. The ones that they finalized will result in life cycle savings ranging from $50 to $140, depending on the product.

The payback periods for these savings range from 1.6 years to 5.6 years, again, depending on the actual product. The average lifetime of a refrigerator is about 14\1/2\ years. That means that those who buy new models will save significantly more on utility bills than any increase in purchase price.

I think the Republicans are clearly distorting the facts in order to make it sound like the new standards will result in increased costs and limited savings when in reality, the opposite is true.

I can't say I am surprised by this tactic. This bill is about gutting agencies and deregulating everything. It is just an example of the larger Project 2025 that would just gut agencies, deregulate everything, and let corporations do whatever they want. Adulterated food, bad drugs, doesn't matter. We don't need an FDA. We don't need an EPA. We don't need any kind of consumer protection agency.

I want my colleagues to understand what this is really about. This isn't just about refrigerators and dishwashers. This is about letting large corporations do whatever they want and not caring at all about the consumer and whether they drink clean water or they breathe clean air or they eat food that they can depend on or drugs that they can depend on that will actually help them.

For all those reasons, I reject this bill, and I urge my colleagues to reject it.

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