Representative Harriet Hageman (R-WY) is holding a Town Hall meeting at the Park County library, Cody Branch on April 7th at 9AM. The public is invited to attend.
Representative Harriet Hageman (R-WY) joined Mac in the Morning on KODI to discuss a number of topics, including her visit to Cody for a Town Hall meeting on Friday, April 7th, at 9AM at the Cody Branch of the Park County Library. The public is welcome to attend.
The Representative is a fierce opponent of the Biden Administration’s plan to have our country not be reliant on fossil fuels, like coal and natural gas, by 2035. When asked if that is a reasonable goal, Rep. Hageman says absolutely not. “We are not getting rid of fossil fuels. But what they’re doing is lying to the American public, I refer [to 2035] as a ‘magic year,’ whether it’s 2030, 2035 or 2040, [the Biden Administration] consistently push the year back, conveniently so, after they are out of power,” Rep. Hageman said.
The White House set out a target of 80% renewable energy generation by 2030 and 100% carbon-free electricity five years later. Hageman, who was a trial attorney before ousting Liz Cheney in the House of Representatives in 2022, strongly disagrees with President Biden’s policy of the United States transitioning to all-clean energy sources. A new report came out stating that the use of a primary fossil fuel, coal, has increased overall in the world despite the fact that many countries have made promises to eventually phase out the fuel that contributes the most plant-warming gas into the atmosphere. Hageman illustrated her point by saying, on a practical basis, the process to make wind and solar energy possible cannot happen without the use of fossil fuels. Coal and natural gas have to be used in the making of concrete and steel which, in turn is used in the construction of windmills and the installation of solar panels. “How are they going to put up wind turbines without coal? You want to know why our wind turbines in Wyoming don’t freeze up like they did in Texas last year and dang near took down the entire grid? Because we use oil in our turbines to keep them operating in the winter so they don’t freeze.”
When President Barack Obama initiated his Clean Power Plan in 2015, he called on the electric companies to cut their carbon pollution by 32 percent by 2030. His plan did not lay out a trajectory in phasing out oil, coal or natural gas. But that all changed when President Biden took office and ramped up his vision for a clean energy future based on the scarcity of oil and natural gas sources. “The idea that this administration wants everybody to suffer for some radical, Green New Deal idea is absolutely ridiculous,” Hageman says.
President Obama’s plan had called for the electricity sector to cut its carbon pollution 32 percent by 2030, and did not lay out a trajectory for phasing out oil, coal, or natural gas production. When President Biden’s took office, he ramped up the clean energy initiative, devising a new plan, which carries a price tag of $2 trillion. The plan would eliminate carbon emissions from the electric sector by 2035, impose stricter gas mileage standards on automobiles, and upgrade the nation’s transportation system. To reach its 2035 carbon-free electricity goal, the campaign includes wind, solar, and other types of energy that cannot be counted on as far as a consistent, reliable source of power.
A new report came out that said wind and solar power is cheaper to operate than coal-fired power plants. The Biden Administration wants to close 50 percent of the United States’ coal-fired electric plants by 2026 because wind and solar power are less expensive to generate power. Hageman vehemently disagrees with this saying, “Wind and solar are not less expensive than coal [due to] subsidies. [Wind and solar] are massively, massively, massively, massively subsidized. Without billions and billions and billions of dollar of subsidies, wind and solar are not less expensive than coal and when those subsidies go away, and they will because [the United States] is 32 trillion dollars in debt, there is absolutely no reason either of those resources are less expensive.”
Solar and wind energy, according to Representative Hageman, cannot operate without coal or natural gas backing it up because it’s intermittent energy, which means it doesn’t consistently produce energy 24/7. “You can’t build a windmill, you can’t build one, unless you have the concrete 30 feet into the ground to keep them stable. And you can’t make the concrete without coal,” Hageman explained.
On the subject of the indictment and arraignment of Donald Trump this past Tuesday, Rep. Hageman has been very vocal in her defense of the former president. She says that it is a purely political move. “This is absurd, it is Kabuki theater, it is to deflect attention from the corruption of the Bidens, it is to try to take out the front-runner for the Republican Party. It’s an abuse and misuse of power of our legal system. It is a tragedy that I never, ever thought that I would ever see in the United States of America.”
Speaking from her legal background, Rep. Hageman doesn’t agree with the Manhattan District Attorney’s assumption that Trump committed a crime. “As an attorney, the idea that [the Manhattan DA] would bring this claim, having looked at the indictment, [the DA] don’t even alleged a crime. It is bizarre to me that you got an indictment, and a proceeding that has been watched around the world, and all [the DA] has done is put a bunch of, they’ve just thrown a bunch of words on a piece of paper. There is nothing in there that has demonstrated he has broken the law. [The DA has] made allegations, but what they did was put down the allegations in paragraph one and then cut and pasted it 34 more times,” Hageman says.
Listen to the full interview here.
