The House on Wednesday passed the second of two GOP-led bills to safeguard natural gas stoves and block the Biden administration from imposing regulations or a ban on the popular household cooking appliance.
The measures cleared the Republican-controlled chamber after being placed on the back burner by leadership for a week, as furious hardline conservatives ground floor action to a halt in protest of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt-limit deal with President Biden.
Having cleared the logjam, the House voted 249-181 on Wednesday for the Save Our Gas Stoves Act to prevent the Department of Energy from finalizing proposed efficiency standards that would render at least half of current market models out of compliance.
In the vote, 29 Democrats broke rank to support the legislation, spearheaded by Arizona GOP Rep. Debbie Lesko.
“I never would have thought that I would need to introduce legislation to protect Americans’ kitchen appliances, but this only goes to show how out of touch this administration’s policies have become,” Ms. Lesko said.
On Tuesday, the House voted 248-180 for the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act to prohibit the Consumer Product Safety Commission from banning the sales of new gas stoves. North Dakota GOP Rep. Kelly Armstrong, the legislation’s author, said his bill would only prevent the commission from banning gas stoves broadly but would not prohibit actions taken against specific models to address safety hazards.
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“We all agree that consumer product and safety is important,” Mr. Armstrong said. “Yet, it is apparent that the underlying motivation behind this veiled consumer safety play is a green climate agenda with the goal to further restrict natural gas.”
On that measure, 29 Democrats also crossed the aisle to vote for the bill.
Despite garnering bipartisan support, both bills are dead on arrival with Senate Democratic leaders. Rather, the measures mark the latest episode in the culture war over the methane-emitting appliance amid concerns from Democrats and environmentalists of their impacts to climate change and consumers’ health.
Still, Senate Energy Committee Chairman Joe Manchin III, West Virginia Democrat, and seven GOP senators introduced the Senate version of Ms. Lesko’s bill on Wednesday.
“The federal government has no business telling Americans how to cook their dinner,” Mr. Manchin said. “My view is that it’s part of a broader, administration-wide regulatory effort to eliminate fossil fuels.”
Roughly 40% of U.S. households use a gas stove. But an increasing number of blue cities are looking to prohibit the use of natural gas in most new buildings, effectively banning gas stoves. New York recently became the first state to pass a similar law prohibiting the use of natural gas in new construction.
The Biden administration has repeatedly said neither officials nor the president support outlawing gas stoves. The CPSC also walked back earlier comments by one of its commissioners that a ban was on the table.
However, officials this week from the Justice Department and Energy Department urged federal judges in a “friend of the court” brief to reconsider their decision to overturn a local ban on natural gas in new buildings in Berkeley, California.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has defended her department’s proposed efficiency rules as periodic requirements under the law that would have little impact on the majority of Americans who do not have high-end models.
“We are doing our duty to make sure that appliances are more energy efficient, as we are required to do under the Energy Policy Conservation Act of 1975,” Ms. Granholm told the House Energy and Commerce Committee last month. “Nobody’s taking my gas stove. Nobody will take your gas stove.”
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
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