{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://mariodiazbalart.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/icymi-rep-diaz-balart-and-rep-mccaul-new-york-post-bidens-energy-plan", "ICYMI: Rep. D\u00edaz-Balart and Rep. McCaul in the New York Post: Biden\u2019s energy plan means lights out for Africa", "2023-12-28", "2023", "2023-12", "Republican", "House", "FL", "Mario Diaz-Balart", "D000600", "mariodiazbalart.house.gov", "mariodiazbalart", "https://mariodiazbalart.house.gov/media-center/press-releases", "scraper", "Op-ed: Mario D\u00edaz-Balart and Michael McCaul\n\nDecember 25, 2023\n\nRead the full op-edhere:\n\nThe Biden administration\u2019s decision to impose oppressive, burdensome restrictions on developing African countries attempting to advance and lift themselves from destitution and dependence is profoundly concerning.\n\nEnergy poverty is at the heart of Africa\u2019s development challenges.\n\nNo country on Earth became prosperous and self-reliant without access to affordable and plentiful energy.\n\nEnergy security is the prerequisite for industrialization, job creation, advanced health care and effective education systems.\n\nProsperity is only possible with ready access to inexpensive energy.\n\nCongress initiated the successful, bipartisan Power Africa program in 2015, with the underlying legislation mandating a commonsense \u201call-of-the-above\u201d energy strategy with both conventional and renewable sources.\n\nRegrettably, the Biden administration has gutted Power Africa with its onerous restrictions.\n\nInstead of leveraging all available tools to pull Africa out of energy poverty, it only allows so-called \u201cgreen-energy projects\u201d to receive US funding and support.\n\nThis policy is simply energy colonialism.\n\nEven worse, it is hypocritical and a huge waste of money and opportunities.\n\nPresident Biden\u2019s unauthorized climate envoy,John Kerry, is flying around the world in jet planes while abandoning the African people to the impossible task of solving their serious energy crises with ineffective and counterproductive solutions: solar panels filled with parts made by forced labor in Communist China.\n\nMost recently he and other administration officials, including Vice PresidentKamala Harris, attended COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, where they pledged billions in taxpayer money to the Green Climate Fund \u2014 a slush fund for special-interest projects with no real oversight that has funded projects in China, the world\u2019s second-largest economy.\n\nThese pledges of billions in taxpayer money invested only in perceived \u201cgreen\u201d projects will do nothing to address the true drivers of pollution \u2014 like China \u2014 or empower the African continent.\n\nWe find it unconscionable the administration is exploiting the continent\u2019s dire needs for investments toward genuine modernization and advancement to appease its special interests and partisan agenda.\n\nIt is wrong to hold still-developing African countries to a standard even the most advanced economies cannot achieve.\n\nThis virtue signaling will have disastrous results for US interests in Africa.\n\nThe burden on Africa is even more absurd when one considers Africa\u2019s current emissions are entirely inconsequential, amounting to less than the margin of error in climate models used to speculate about the effects of climate change.\n\nIn other words, if Africa were to reduce its emissions to zero, the enormous sacrifice that would entail would still have almost no effect on a global scale.\n\nAnd even if African countries tripled their current emissions levels from natural-gas power plants, it would still be negligible compared with China\u2019s continuously growing carbon emissions.\n\nInstead of confronting the world\u2019s second-largest economy, responsible for 27% of global emissions \u2014 more than six times the emissions of the entire continent of Africa \u2014 the Biden administration is holding undeveloped countries to an unfair standard.\n\nChina has shown it\u2019s eager to finance the conventional energy development Team Biden is trying to quash.\n\nBiden\u2019s approach to Power Africa is wasteful, paternalistic and counterproductive.\n\nIt\u2019s wasteful because it devalues critical energy assistance to Africa and diverts it to less useful priorities.\n\nIt\u2019s paternalistic because it dictates oppressive burdens on Africa\u2019s development the United States did not endure during its formative stages.\n\nIt\u2019s counterproductive because it hinders Africa\u2019s advancement while driving countries into the waiting arms of the true problem in climate change: Communist China.\n\nIn the Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs appropriations bill for fiscal year 2024, which passed the House in September, there\u2019s a provision to right this wrong.\n\nIf enacted, the bill would simply require the president to return to the balanced approach of allowing countries in Africa to use all tools available to promote energy security and development.\n\nAfter all, the goal of Power Africa is not to mindlessly impose an ineffectual and wasteful climate-change agenda where it does not fit.\n\nMario D\u00edaz-Balart is a US representative for Florida\u2019s 26th Congressional District, a senior member of the House Committee on Appropriations and chairman of the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee. Michael McCaul is a US representative for Texas\u2019 10th Congressional District, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and chairman emeritus of the House Committee on Homeland Security.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T01:14:16Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://mariodiazbalart.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/icymi-rep-diaz-balart-and-rep-mccaul-new-york-post-bidens-energy-plan"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.4710579998791218, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}