Sheldon Whitehouse: “I am here to join my colleagues in objecting to President Trump's fake energy emergency, which is part of the Trump…”

“I am here to join my colleagues in objecting to President Trump's fake energy emergency, which is part of the Trump continuing strategy to hurt families and help billionaires-- in this case, the fossil fuel billionaires who put at least $100 million into getting him elected, probably a good deal more because so much of the money was dark money. We don't know. But there is every reason to believe it was multiple hundreds of millions of dollars spent to get him elected and it is payback time for the big donors. Tough bounce to the families whose bills are going to go up as a result. How are families bills going to go up? For starters, renewables are less expensive than fossil fuel. When you add them to the mix, the grid runs on a cue, and it takes the cheapest sources and puts them in the line. And as you demand more and more electricity, you finally get to the more expensive energy sources. And inexpensive renewables coming in drives out the expensive fossil fuel from the top, and it lowers energy costs overall. So when you stop doing that, the most expensive plants have to come back online, and that will raise utility bills but, most importantly to Trump, profits for fossil fuel billionaires. We make ourselves, with this, more vulnerable to the OPEC fossil fuel cartel, the oil and gas cartel. They raise prices by manipulating international markets. The American oil and gas companies follow up.…”