House Republicans on Thursday approved a sprawling energy package that aims to undo virtually the entirety of the president

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Biden’s agenda to tackle climate change.

The legislation would greatly increase domestic production of oil, natural gas and coal and ease permitting restrictions that delay pipelines, refineries and other projects. It would boost production of essential minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt, which are used in electric vehicles, computers, cell phones and other products.

By a vote of 225 to 204, the House sent the measure to the Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) called it dead upon arrival. Four Democrats joined all but one Republican in supporting the bill.

Biden has threatened to veto the bill, saying it would replace the pro-consumer policy passed in the landmark climate bill passed last year with a thinly veiled permit to pollute. profits,” the White House said.

Republicans are calling the bill the Lower Energy Costs Act and symbolically labeling it HR 1 as the top legislative priority of the new GOP majority, which took control of the House in January.

The measure combines dozens of separate proposals and represents more than two years of work by Republicans annoyed by Biden’s environmental agenda. They say the president’s efforts have threatened US energy production and increased costs at the gas pump and grocery store.

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Families are struggling because of President Biden’s war on US energy,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), one of the bill’s lead authors.

The GOP bill will free up “abundant U.S. natural resources” “so we can produce energy in America,” Scalise said. We don’t have to be addicted to foreign countries that don’t like us.’

Democrats called the bill a giveaway for major oil companies.

“Republicans refuse to hold polluters responsible for the damage they do to our air, water, communities and climate,” New Jersey Representative Frank Pallone said.

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the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

While the Democrats won historic victories for the American people by passing historic climate legislation, the Republicans are actively working to undermine that progress and are doing the work of their polluting friends,” Pallone said.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) said the bill restores U.S. energy leadership by reiterating unnecessary taxes and overregulation for U.S. energy producers, and “makes it easier to build things in America” ​​by putting a time limit of two years for environmental investigations that now take an average of seven years.

Every time we need a pipeline, a road or a dam, it’s held up for five to seven years and adds millions of dollars in costs to get the project compliant with Washington’s permitting process,” McCarthy said in a speech at the House floor. long, it’s priceless, it’s not based on science and it’s holding us back.”

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He pointed to a project to modify and improve the Lake Isabella dam in his Central California district, which has been going on for 18 years and is still unfinished.

Allowing reforms is not for everyone,” McCarthy added. If you’re happy to pay more at the pump, you don’t want to make it faster for American workers to build more pipelines. If you’re China, you’d rather America sit back and let others lead. you’re a bureaucrat, you might really enjoy reading the 600 page environmental impact studies.

Most Americans want lower prices and more energy production in the US, McCarthy said results he said the bill will deliver.

Democrats called that misleading, saying the GOP plan was a thinly veiled attempt to reward oil companies and other energy producers who contributed millions of dollars to GOP campaigns.

Arizona Rep. Raul

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Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, derided the bill as the Polluters Over People Act “and a nearly 200-page love letter to polluting industries.”

Rather than reining in big oil companies that have made record profits while hoarding thousands of unused leases on public lands and waters, the GOP bill lowers royalty rates paid by power producers and reinstates uncompetitive leasing of public lands, it said. Grijalva.

The bill also gives mining companies a true free-for-all on our public lands and mocks tribal consultations” required by federal law, he said.

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Under the GOP plan, mining companies will destroy “sacred and special places” in the West, “ruining the landscape and leaving behind a toxic mess that pollutes our water and harms our health, all without paying a dime to the American people,” Grijalva said. .

Schumer called the measure a giveaway to Big Oil masquerading as an energy package.

The House energy package would make good on key environmental safeguards in fossil fuel projects, “locking America” ​​into expensive, erratic and dirty energy sources as we push back more than a decade on our clean energy transition,” Schumer said.

Schumer said he favors streamlining the country’s cumbersome permitting process for energy projects, especially those that provide clean energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal power.

But the Republican plan falls woefully short on this front as well,” he said, calling on Republicans to support reforms that would ease the transition to renewable energy and accelerate the construction of transmission lines to bolster the country’s aging power grid.

Schumer and other Democrats said the Republican bill would repeal a new $27 billion greenhouse gas reduction fund and other parts of the climate and health bill passed by Democrats last year. The bill would also remove a new tax on methane pollution.

Four Democrats voted for the bill: Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzale

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of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington State. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) Against the bill.