Feb. 24, 2020
HARRISBURG — House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee (ERE) Chairman Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) issued the following statement after questioning PA Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Patrick McDonnell during this morning’s House Appropriations state budget hearings:
“Much like his testimony several times before the House ERE committee, Secretary McDonnell’s extremely insulting pattern of evasive non-answers and blatant refusal to provide any substantive information on the rogue governor’s executive order to begin illegally entering Pennsylvania into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) amounted to more Chicken Little, partisan-pandering for the governor’s job-killing, false-science-driven climate proposals. Although the secretary conveniently failed to mention it once again, RGGI would be imposed through massive energy taxes and overregulation.”
Watch Chairman Metcalfe’s questioning of DEP Secretary McDonnell below:
Here’s a brief summary of Metcalfe’s questions that McDonnell failed to sufficiently answer while testifying under oath:
• How can the implementation of RGGI be driven by market forces, when RGGI is a government program?
• Why would the Wolf administration unilaterally move to join RGGI, when the evidence clearly indicates that it would negatively impact industry and jobs throughout Pennsylvania?
• Does the Wolf administration anticipate dropping the emissions cap at some point in the future to zero tons of CO2 to eliminate coal and other fossil fuels?
“Until the Wolf Administration can honestly move beyond the realm of zero answers, uncertainty and non-transparency as to how the RGGI process would proceed, Pennsylvania taxpayers and job-creating energy producers have every reason to question whether our tax dollars are being spent in an appropriate manner by executive agencies such as the DEP.”
Representative Daryl Metcalfe
12th District
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Media Contact: Ty McCauslin
717.772.9979
RepMetcalfe.com /
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