TRANSCRIPT: At A Roundtable, Leader Schumer Highlights Skyrocketing Energy Costs Thanks To Donald Trump’s Broken Promises & Failed Policies

Washington, D.C. - Today, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) co-led a roundtable with Ranking Members Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) to highlight how Donal Trump's policies are raising the cost of energy around the country. This roundtable builds on a 'Broken Promises' report that the Senators released earlier today on energy costs that is part of Senate Democrats' year-long Lower Costs initiative. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks:

This is the third major pillar of our year-long effort to lay out a lower-cost agenda. Lower costs is our North Star all year long, and that star shines on an issue that stings so many households, which is energy costs. Look, Trump made a very simple promise to Americans. He said, "I'll cut the price of energy and electricity in half my first year." Well, in one year, Trump has broken that promise to the people plain and simple. Under his failed leadership, energy costs have risen as much as 13 percent nationwide.

And earlier today, Martin [Heinrich], Sheldon [Whitehouse] and I released a report that carefully lays out how Donald Trump broke these promises. It's the most detailed breakdown yet for how Donald Trump has sent energy costs up while sending American energy dominance down. So, I thank Heinrich and Whitehouse and our teams for their good work. Under Trump, electricity prices are up in almost every state, according to a JEC report. And why is he doing this? Well, you know, sometimes with him it's just whimsy. And of course, with offshore wind, it was the fact that a company had the temerity to build windmills off the coast of his golf course. And he got mad at them.

But it's worse. It's corruption. The leading Big Oil people promised Trump a billion dollars if he would eliminate tax credits for wind and solar and eliminate them, he tried to do, because of the work of us. And there were a few good Republicans. We got some of them restored, but not as many as they should. But it was horrible. And Trump should be held accountable for that. When Americans get their electricity bills and see that they're higher, blame Donald Trump and his open hand getting a billion dollars in contributions for that. One year in office, he's making good on this quid pro quo. When he got the billion, he said he promised he'd do it. This is one of the few places he's actually kept a promise. He keeps his promises on bad things much more than on good things.

And so, he has blocked the cheapest and fastest sources of energy, propping up dirty and expensive fossil fuel power plants that are costing people millions. Our report lays out his war on clean energy and how it's raising your prices. We say that to the average American family, how they used their "Big Ugly Bill" to raise taxes on clean energy to pay for tax breaks for his billionaire friends, how he weaponized the federal project approval process to undercut Big Oil's greatest competition, clean energy. These guys are working on trying to get some permitting done and some transmission done to undo some of that damage. He undermined billions of dollars of clean energy investments that would have lowered energy costs that powered 14 million homes and supported 170,000 jobs.

And now, of course, to boot, his war with Iran is driving up the cost of gasoline and diesel. He knew it would happen ahead of time. He did nothing about it. If he would have had planning, he would have said, the greatest weakness we face with Iran is the Strait of Hormuz. Let's do something about it first. But he doesn't. He doesn't think about these things. It's whatever pops into his head. So, this is very bad. And I want to thank my colleagues for working together on this report. It's timely. Its findings are troubling. It lays bare just how much Donald Trump is rigging the game to help his Big Oil donors by blocking the production of affordable, easy, clean energy while keeping expensive coal and fossil fuel projects up and running. I think Martin [Heinrich] will talk about this. He's even paying for a coal plant that we don't even need and that raises people's rates. The American people are paying the price. We Democrats are going to do everything we can, not only to point out what Trump did, but undo it. And believe me, we get back the majority, in terms of undoing Trump's bad stuff and then doing even more good stuff, you ain't seen nothing yet.

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