Friends and neighbors —
New England is currently enduring an arctic weather blast with subzero temperatures and winds as high as 55 miles per hour rocking the region. This is similar to the polar vortex Minnesota experienced several years ago.
The Democrat majority in the legislature recently passed their extreme energy bill. Some headlines are calling the bill “carbon-free by 2040.” In truth, the legislation should be called the “Minnesota Blackout bill.” Multiple experts have said the legislation will put our entire electric grid at risk resulting in less energy reliability, plunging us into rolling black-outs, and causing our monthly electric bills to skyrocket even higher. When we sustain prolonged, below zero temps again in our state after the new mandates are fully implemented, we will be in big trouble putting the lives of Minnesotans in danger.
During the debate, Senate Republicans attempted to protect ratepayers from the worst of the bill. Every improvement we offered was rejected on a party-line vote of 33 Republicans voting for and 34 Democrats voting against. Democrats care more about hyper-partisan ideology over common sense that’s best for Minnesotans.
When I talk to folks around our great community, the feedback I consistently receive is people want clean, cheap, reliable energy. Minnesotans deserve to have confidence our electric grid will not thrust us into blackouts, confidence higher costs will not be forced upon us, and confidence our homes will have heat, especially in the heart of winter.
These are reasonable expectations but Democrats are not interested. Democrats do not care how expensive our energy bills are, don’t care if the lights will turn on, and do not care if we suffer outages for days or potentially weeks at a time. Republicans have reasonableness and Minnesotans in mind while Democrats are full of zeal for their extreme agenda.
Sincerely,
Minnesota State Senator
District 30