Under the Biden administration’s reign of radical activism, there has been a war on law and order, both at the border and in our communities. There has been a war on American energy independence. There has been a war on life and religious freedom. There has been a war on our Constitution.
And there has been a war on everyday household appliances.
That’s right. President Joe Biden and his army of federal bureaucrats have decided to restrict the public’s freedom to choose, own, and operate the appliances that best suit their families and homes. This unconstitutional allegiance to a global energy and environmental agenda would fundamentally change the interior of American homes and not for the better.
During the Trump administration, federal agencies were forced to maximize competition, choice, and freedom. However, once Biden took office, the levers of big government returned to Washington, and a seemingly endless number of schemes were enacted to destroy future liberties and opportunities in pursuit of leftist environmental goals. The genesis of these actions, from the Department of Energy in particular, stems from a fixation on eliminating all natural gas functions, replacing that critical energy source with those approved by international climate czars. One of these efforts was a rule from the DOE that would set new, draconian energy efficiency standards for gas cooking products, such as stoves.
When I first heard about this rule, I thought it was a joke. Unfortunately, it was a very real back-door attempt to ban virtually all new gas stoves in the United States and thus exert government control over another aspect of people’s lives. According to the DOE’s own technical report, 96% of the market share of gas stoves would not have met the standards under the proposed rule.
Another action from the Biden administration would unleash an avalanche of new regulations for dishwashers, washing machines, showers, toilets, water heaters, air conditioners, heat pumps, and furnaces. The federal government essentially wants to ban popular models of appliances and products in homes, not only raising costs for middle-class families but also creating performance problems so the new appliances won’t actually work as well as they do now.
To counter these schemes, I introduced two bills in the House of Representatives. One was the Save Our Gas Stoves Act, which prevents the secretary of the Energy Department from implementing energy conservation standards if the standards result in the unavailability of a product on account of the type of fuel the product uses. This legislation passed the House in 2023 but has not yet been taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
I also introduced the Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act, which reforms the DOE’s procedures for issuing energy efficiency standards for home appliances, prohibiting the federal government from prescribing any new or amended energy efficiency standards for a product if those standards are not technologically feasible and economically justified. This bill passed out of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and will receive a vote in the full chamber this year.
Thankfully, our actions have forced the administration to take a slight detour from some of its oppressive regulatory proposals. Earlier this year, for example, the DOE released its final rule for energy efficiency standards for residential cooking products, issuing guidelines that would ban 3% of current models of gas stoves, down from the initial 96% ban. This was a hard-fought victory.
Additionally, the DOE just recently issued its final rule on efficiency standards for certain home appliances, scaling back the original proposal after facing significant pushback from the public and government officials. We are heartened that the rule was again not as bad as it could have been.
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While we are grateful that we escaped the brunt of government regulations on both rules, we remain vigilant on all attempts to hijack liberties and consumer choice for future generations. Republicans in Congress and at the state level are committed to winning this war and ensuring that families can keep their preferred appliances in their homes.
This fight, though, must not be another Republican-versus-Democrat campaign in which partisan lines are drawn and a game of “tug-of-war” determines which direction the country follows. Republicans and Democrats should be on the same side, protecting our rights to choose our appliances. We should be united in standing against Biden and his band of bureaucrats as they shamelessly try to commandeer our appliances and remake this nation into the image of their radical environmental designs.
Debbie Lesko is a U.S. representative for Arizona and serves on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
