Kaine & Heinrich Refile Legislation to Dismantle Trump’s Radical, Cost-Raising, Job-Killing Energy Agenda

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) and U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Ranking Member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, announced that they refiled legislation in July to challenge President Donald Trump's radical, cost-raising, job-killing energy agenda by repealing the national energy emergency declaration Trump has used to give Big Oil handouts. Kaine and Heinrich previously filed this legislation in February, but Senate Republicans blocked it from passage. Any senator can challenge a presidential declaration of national emergency every six months. The legislation is privileged, so the Senate will be required to vote on it.

"The only energy crisis in America is the one Trump created by declaring an emergency at a time when the U.S. was producing more energy than any country in the world, and then slashing critical energy investment incentives through his 'Big, Ugly Law,'" said Senator Kaine. "President Trump's radical energy agenda is raising costs and killing jobs, and it's up to Congress to dismantle it piece by piece. That includes repealing the emergency declaration he used to hamstring affordable, clean energy industries and rig the system in favor of his Big Oil donors."

"The real energy emergency isn't a made-up crisis-it's the skyrocketing energy costs American families are facing because of Republicans' relentless attacks on clean energy. While Donald Trump hands out giveaways to his billionaire friends and sabotages Made-in-America jobs, everyday Americans are stuck paying more on their utility bills. His Big, Beautiful Bill for Billionaires is nothing but a scam-and working families are footing the bill," said Ranking Member Heinrich.

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to grant his Administration new powers to promote fossil fuels instead of clean energy and bypass bedrock environmental laws. Specifically, Trump's emergency allows officials to oversee the accelerated approval of fossil fuel projects, including oil drilling rigs and pipelines, and explore the use of eminent domain to take Americans' land for the "siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation" of non-solar and non-wind-related energy production.

Since August 2022, Democrat-led investments have created an American-made energy boom, spurring the highest levels of factory construction in U.S. history with more than 400,000 new jobs announced across the country. However, Trump's war on American-made energy and Republicans' rollback of provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act will kill these new jobs, weaken the power grid, increase our reliance on foreign energy, and raise families' annual energy bills by up to 12 percent or $32 billion more in total household energy costs over the next five years. Across the country, more than 60,000 jobs have already been lost or threatened, and more than $440 billion in private investments are at risk. By 2030, the United States' GDP is expected to decline by $130 billion each year as new energy development and advanced manufacturing decline under the Republican bill. The Trump Administration has also canceled billions in clean energy projects.

Full text of the bill is available here.

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