President Joe Biden mostly backed down from his threat to gas stoves, but that does not mean it, or his impulse to control people’s everyday lives, wasn’t real.
Biden’s Energy Department went ahead with a watered-down version of the regulations it had been floating for kitchen appliances, finalizing rules that would affect only 3% of gas stoves and 23% of electric stoves on the market. Democrats and their media allies are now trying to paint the GOP concern about the previous rules as crazy and unfounded because the new rule isn’t as severe.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) said Republicans had “shamelessly employed baseless scare tactics on this issue to distract from the reality that they have no solutions of their own for lowering energy costs or reducing emissions.” CNN dismissively headlined its piece on the new standards “Joe Biden is not coming for your gas stove.” The Washington Post did the same.
Go back in time to the far-off year of 2023, however, and you see that the outrage was founded. Richard Trumka Jr., appointed by Biden to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said, “Products that can’t be made safe can be banned” and that “any option is on the table” for gas stoves. He said, “Gas stoves can emit dangerous level of toxic chemicals — even when not in use.” He also wrote in October 2022 that “There is sufficient information available for CPSC to issue a [Notice of Proposed Rulemaking] in FY 2023 proposing to ban gas stoves in homes.”
Trumka was not some random bureaucrat buried deep in some agency. The CPSC has a chairman and three commissioners, one of whom is Trumka. He both privately and publicly talked of banning gas stoves based on junk science, and in February 2023, the agency released a proposal that would have targeted half of the gas stove models on the market. In the meantime, Democrats are working to ban gas stoves and other gas appliances in Chicago, New York, Washington, and Massachusetts, among other places.
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But sure, you are supposed to believe that Biden and his paint-by-numbers progressive administration were never even considering doing exactly what other Democratic-run states and cities are doing and what one of his CPSC commissioners proposed doing. That was just a GOP culture war, which Republicans started by daring to notice what Democrats are doing.
That impulse by Biden and his administration isn’t going to go away just because he mostly backed down on this matter. Democratic politicians and bureaucrats, especially on climate, see it as their job to determine how people live their lives and what they are allowed to use or purchase. The new decision is a win for both consumers and for sanity, but it isn’t going to stop Democrats from trying again in the future, whether that be on this or any other matter of daily life command and control.