Jared Huffman: “Let's talk about this claim of a double standard and of hypocrisy. Oh, the poor fossil fuel industry is being singled…”

“Let's talk about this claim of a double standard and of hypocrisy. Oh, the poor fossil fuel industry is being singled out. Poor Big Oil with its record profits and its record exports and its executive bonuses and its collusion with OPEC to gouge American consumers, they are just such a victim in the telling of my friends across this aisle. I hate to intrude on that narrative with a little bit of truth, but the fact is, the offshore wind industry already does this stuff. They have to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act. The reason that the fossil fuel industry is the subject of this regulation is to bring them into compliance. I guess it reflects the radical proposition that the Big Oil oligarchs, your pals in the industry, should play by the same rules as everyone else. That is not socialism or wokeness or anything else. It should just be common sense and fairness. Mr. Speaker, I will talk about the real human cost of our Republican friends' allergy, opposition, reflexive opposition, to any type of regulation and what this CRA would mean for working men and women on the Outer Continental Shelf. {time} 0945 Marine archaeological surveys are not just a nice idea. They actually are safeguards that protect workers from hidden dangers lurking beneath the waves. These surveys can detect unexploded ordnance, UXOs, which are military ammunition, that has never detonated. There is actually a lot of that out there.…”