Letters

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January 26, 2021

President Joe Biden
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20500

President Biden:

We write today urging the withdrawal of the nomination of Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM) as Secretary of the Interior. Nominating Representative Haaland is a direct threat to working men and women and a rejection of responsible development of America’s natural resources.

As a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Representative Haaland jumped at the opportunity to introduce the Green New Deal in the House, a so-called plan to “completely transform”¹ our economy and that “goes farther than just calling for a ban on hydraulic fracturing.”² The harmful effects of the Green New Deal are well-documented, but it includes eliminating air travel, responsible petroleum development, and the use of non-electric vehicles, costing each American family $65,000 and the United States $93 trillion annually.³

Further, Representative Haaland’s Green New Deal sets unfathomable energy objectives thereby forcing energy-sensitive mines, paper mills, and manufacturers out of business. Simply put, the Green New Deal championed by Representative Haaland is an attempt at halting any industrial development and millions of Americans will lose quality, high-wage jobs in oil and gas, aviation, mining, logging, and other sectors.

In fact, Representative Haaland has publicly stated her goal of stopping all oil and gas leasing on federal lands, which means killing an industry that provided more than $8 billion in revenue to the United States in 2019 alone.⁴

Representative Haaland not only rejects America’s leadership as a net exporter of petroleum, but also has actively fought to oppose high-wage mining jobs. For example, Representative Haaland cosponsored and voted in favor of H.R. 5598 in the previous Congress, a bill seeking to unilaterally withdraw more than 234,000 acres from responsible development in the Superior National Forest and supported similar attacks on responsible development of the 1002 Area in Alaska and uranium formations in Arizona. These Green New Deal attacks on our natural resources will force the United States to increase foreign reliance for materials like rare-earth elements, cobalt, copper, nickel, iron, uranium, and aggregates from countries with no environmental or labor standards like Communist China, Russia, and the Congo.

The nomination of Representative Haaland as Interior Secretary embodies clear support for the Green New Deal and a rejection of even the potential of high-wage jobs. Therefore, we implore in the strongest terms to withdraw the nomination of Representative Haaland and instead nominate a consensus-driven individual who will not implement policies that will kill jobs and increase the country’s reliance on foreign adversaries.

Sincerely,

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¹ https://web.archive.org/web/20190207191119/https:/ocasio-cortez.house.gov/media/blog-posts/green-new-deal-faq
² Ibid.
³ https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/the-green-new-deal-scope-scale-and-implications/
⁴ https://revenuedata.doi.gov/explorecommodity=Oil%2CGas%2COil%20%26%20Gas%2CTar%20Sands%2COil%20Shale&dataType=Revenue&location=NF&mapLevel=State&offshoreRegions=false&period=Calendar%20Year&year=2019