Big Sky Times

To watch Daines’ remarks, click HERE.

U.S. SENATE – U.S. Senator Steve Daines today delivered remarks at the weekly Republican Senate Leadership press conference slamming President Biden’s radical anti-energy agenda that includes breaching dams on the Lower Snake River.

“I’m guessing there’s a few fans here of the show Yellowstone who maybe believe that John Dutton is the governor of Montana. I will tell you that’s not true. It’s Greg Gianforte, who has been a great friend of mine and somebody who I built businesses with and created jobs over many years. What I’m about to share with you, you might think is another episode or script coming from the show, Yellowstone, coming out of Hollywood. What I’m going to share with you is a script coming out of the White House, out of the Biden administration.

“I never thought I’d live to see the day where an administration would be supportive of breaching hydro dams when they’re stopping Keystone pipeline, stopping oil and gas leases, mandates on reducing the number of gas stoves we can have, mandates that require two thirds of our vehicles be electric in the next ten years. And then he goes as far to support breaching hydropower dams, a renewable source of energy, zero carbon base load power. I never thought I’d be here talking about that.

“Hydropower energy is safe, it’s reliable. It’s one of the lowest cost forms of energy we have in our entire portfolio and breaching a hydropower dam when the world is going to need fifty percent more power in the next twenty-five years than we use today, it’s the last thing we should be doing. We should be supporting and promoting hydropower, not supporting efforts to breach them, as the Biden administration is doing. The dams on the lower Snake River produce enough electricity to power about 800,000 homes in the northwest U.S. In Montana, forty percent of electricity comes from hydropower. Biden claims that this breaching of the dam would quote, ‘protect family farms, outdoor recreation businesses and rural communities.’ But in reality, it is exactly the opposite. At a time when we need more reliable, affordable, low-cost energy, zero carbon energy, the administration is going in an opposite direction.

“I can tell you Montanans know that we want to see an expanded energy portfolio, more options to consider. This is the last thing we should be doing and I call on the Biden administration to back off this idea of breaching hydropower dams.”

Daines introduced a bill earlier this year to protect the Snake River dams and later called on the Biden administration to preserve the dams and they hydropower they provide.

Daines also led the introduction of a landmark bipartisan bill to bolster hydropower production in Montana and across the U.S.

Original source can be found here.