Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg didn’t let Rep. Aaron Bean’s (R-Fla.) suggestion on electric vehicles slide as he offered a wicked rebuttal at a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing on Thursday.
“Is there a time that you will say, ’You know what? This is just too expensive. This is just too expensive, we want to rethink this policy,’” asked Bean of tax rebates for EVs.
“If you think this is expensive, wait until you find out how much oil and gas subsidies you’ve been supporting,” Buttigieg replied.
“Also, wait until you find out the economic impact that some economists have put at $15 million every hour, or every day, trillions of dollars every year from allowing the environmental conditions in this country and planet to worsen.”
Buttigieg, elsewhere in the hearing, checked Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) for questioning Biden administration efforts to back EVs and for claiming there are “de facto” federal mandates to buy them in an industry that’s in a “bit of a tailspin.”
“I’m wondering is there some point, and if you’ve identified some point, where you will stop, where the administration will stop, where the federal government will stop this requirement and let the market decide, as opposed to the central planning model and this dictatorial policy?” the far-right Republican asked.
Buttigieg noted that he was responding on “limited” time before he rolled out his responses to Perry’s “factually incorrect portions” of his remarks.
“Beginning with the assertion that EV sales are going down, they are, in fact, going up every single year,” Buttigieg replied.
The Transportation secretary, who scolded Perry’s use of the word “tailspin” to describe a “growing sector” of the economy, later left the lawmaker with one final challenge to his claims.
“There is no mandate,” Buttigieg said. “You can purchase a gas car if you want to pay gas prices at the pump. But if you don’t, you can purchase an EV.”