Republican Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw criticized Democrats for the economic policies they’ve begun trying to implement since President Joe Biden took office, saying they will harm working class Americans.
Crenshaw appeared Friday on “Fox News Primetime” and discussed the policies with host Brian Kilmeade. The host expressed his disappointment over the actions Democrats have taken and asked Crenshaw if he expected there would be any bipartisanship in Congress over the economy. (RELATED: Sen. Steve Daines Decries Biden’s ‘Saudi Arabia First Plan’: He ‘Cares More’ About Their Workers Than America’s)
“They’re going to keep talking about unity but they don’t want to unify behind anything that the American working class might actually want,” Crenshaw began. “Couldn’t have said it better than what you just said, Brian. You talked about canceling the Keystone pipeline. Thats tens of thousands of union jobs. Union jobs, by the way, that pay a lot better than jobs for say solar and wind. On average, $20,000 better pay for oil and gas jobs than for solar and wind, and by the way, most of those jobs for solar and wind manufacturing, those are in China.”
Biden signed an executive order Wednesday that revoked a permit that is critical to the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The construction of the pipeline has raised environmental and climate concerns among many politicians and activists. It was expected to transport oil from the Canadian province of Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. The order has been met with condemnation from many Republicans as well as some Canadian politicians.
The solar industry employed 248,000 employees whoe spent most of their time on soalr energy, and the wind industry employed almost 115,000, according to the 2020 U.S. Energy & Employment Report.
In 2017, China had more than 2.5 million people employed in the solar power industry alone, CNN reported.
The average wage for jobs in the natural gas and petroleum industries paid about $24.37 an hour and jobs in solar and wind paid about $24.85 an hour in 2020, making the average wages for the two industries nearly the same, Forbes reported.
Crenshaw then expressed his opposition to Democrat efforts to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. He cited the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), saying it could cost millions of jobs. CBO data from 2019 shows that an increase in the minimum wage to $15 could cause a loss of between zero and 3.7 million jobs.
“I’ve got small businesses in my district begging me to do something about this. You can’t let them do this, they say. We will immediately lose our business. We’re already hanging on by a thread,” Crenshaw added. “So, listen, here is what it comes down to. If you’re going to claim that you are the party of the American working class, you actually have to support working. That’s a requirement to be a working-class party and they just won’t do that.”