Biden Officials Just Can’t Keep Their Hands Off Your Gas Stoves

Asked recently by an Arizona television news anchor to comment on the continuing controversy surrounding the Biden administration efforts to restrict or ban the use of gas stoves in the home, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said, “That is so ridiculous, that story. Because, it sounds like government’s coming in to take your stuff. That is so not true. That is just not true.”

In almost her next breath, though, Granholm went on to perpetuate the supposed science connecting the use of gas stoves to childhood asthma, a claim that simply has not been established. That was on January 23.

Just nine days later, on February 1, Granholm’s Department of Energy beat the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) to the regulatory punch, proposing a new regulation governing home energy consumption, which seeks to diminish the use of, you guessed it, gas stoves in the home. Thus we see the Biden administration just cannot make itself let this issue go.

Upon learning of the DOE proposal, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, took to his twitter account to say the government “has no business telling me – or any American family – how to cook dinner.”

Secretary Granholm and her employees at DOE obviously disagree, as do Richard Trumka, Jr. and fellow commissioners at the CPSC, who plan to propose their own regulation limiting the use of gas stoves this spring.

Groups representing manufacturers of gas stoves and other appliances understand what is really going on here. “This approach by DOE could effectively ban gas appliances,” Jill Notini, a vice president with the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers, told Bloomberg. “We are concerned this approach could eliminate fully featured gas products.”

The DOE’s proposed regulation would set unprecedented energy consumption limits for gas stoves and other gas appliances, an obvious ‘camel’s nose under the tent’ first step in moving towards a ban, which has long been a goal of environmentalist groups who support Democratic election candidates. Regulatory actions such as this one and the move by the CPSC seldom germinate up organically among the career bureaucracy; most often, they are the result of lobbying efforts from outside interest groups. This is no secret.

When Sec. Granholm denies the “government’s coming in to take your stuff,” she is technically correct. There won’t be any federal agents in sunglasses and black suits showing up at your doorstep to load your gas stove into a black helicopter to fly it away to a central federal dump site.

Unless congress moves in a bipartisan way to put a stop to these nascent regulatory actions, though, what will inevitably happen is an effort at implementing incremental regulatory creep that will slowly but surely price gas stoves out of the market for all but the wealthiest upper class of the country. The government simply lacks any scientific basis that would withstand scrutiny in court for an outright ban on these appliances. Given that gas stoves are currently used in about 40% of American homes, there would likely also be a big political price to pay from implementing an immediate ban.

However, lacking any real congressional oversight, the administration obviously feels comfortable in moving to raise the cost of gas stoves and other appliances using incremental regulations based on more subjective energy conservation standards. Again, there is no secret about what is happening here.

But, in a rare exception to recent congressional trends, some real oversight could be coming. On Thursday, Sen. Manchin and Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz introduced bi-partisan legislation that proposes to block any federal ban on gas stoves. More to the current point, the bill would also halt any federal regulatory effort to increase the cost of the stoves.

What a shame it is that this administration is so ideologically motivated on such a tiresome, unnecessary matter. With everything happening in the world today, it surely seems as if Biden’s political appointees would have more important things to deal with.