OPINION:
Appliances aren’t what they used to be. Spend any time in the comments section of websites that review these modern household conveniences, and the consensus is the new stuff is nowhere near as good as the old.
This isn’t nostalgia. The feds are making the tools of everyday life worse, and they’re doing so on purpose. The House voted Tuesday to do something about it.
GOP Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Nick Langworthy of New York introduced two bills that would the Department of Energy from forcing manufacturers to change the design of the dishwashers or refrigerators, unless the DOE’s proposed changes are shown to be “technologically feasible and economically justified.”
This is an important concept to enshrine in law, as liberal bureaucrats are happy to mandate pie-in-the-sky standards and just let industry figure out how to make it happen. Feel-good regulations make liberals think they are accomplishing something, and they aren’t interested in allowing reality to intrude on their delusions.
President Biden, for instance, ordered all automakers to achieve an average fuel economy of 50.4 miles per gallon within the next seven years. That’s not going to happen without a forced conversion to electric vehicles — something the power grid can’t handle and the public doesn’t want.
Either that, or the only vehicles offered for sale will be tiny, lightweight city cars of the sort found in Europe and Japan — which many Americans will never willingly purchase.
That change in design philosophy also conflicts with the Transportation Department’s own suite of onerous safety mandates, which have progressively made cars heavier and less fuel-efficient. Federal decrees regarding the tools of everyday life are often contradictory and unworkable.
As Mr. Langworthy explained in testimony before the House Rules Committee on Tuesday, DOE zealots admit the “energy saving” rules on dishwashers won’t result in net savings to consumers until the 12th year of ownership. The purported savings from the mandatory “upgrade” would be $17.
This is a problem, as the service life of a newly manufactured dishwasher averages 10 years. Thus, most consumers will never see the benefit liberals promise. Once they’re done ruining dishwashers and refrigerators, their next target is air conditioning.
Attendees of the World Economic Forum regularly fly their private jets to Davos, Switzerland, so the fat cats can gab about how the little people will have to change their ways, lest a climatic calamity be triggered. One of the group’s discussion topics is “Air conditioning is threatening our ability to tackle climate change. Here’s what we need to do.”
Donald Trump was subjected to liberal-approved appliances in the White House. “The Obama administration worked out a brand-new air-conditioning system for the West Wing,” the then-president explained in an Oval Office press briefing in 2019. “It was so good before they did the system. Now, it’s freezing or hot in here.”
The micromanagers need to mind their own business. Air conditioning has saved more lives than any Davos attendee or Environmental Protection Agency bureaucrat. The medical journal The Lancet estimated 195,000 heat-related deaths around the world are prevented each year by the century-old technological wonder of air conditioning.
That’s why appliance freedom is about more than clean dishes and unspoiled food. Republicans have the right idea in putting Democrats on the record voting to ruin life’s greatest conveniences.
Make appliances great again.
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