Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin Flip-Flops on American Energy: ‘American Production Needs to be Increased’

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) appears to have flip-flopped on her anti-American-energy record, as she cheered on President Joe Biden for releasing barrels of oil from the strategic reserve and is now saying, “American production [of oil and gas] needs to be increased,” and “the private sector needs to step up.”

During an interview with a local news station, WDIV, at the beginning of March, the congresswoman was asked how she could ease the pain Americans are feeling from supercharged inflation and gas prices.

In response the congresswoman, most likely looking to please voters, said, “The private sector needs to step up,” and “American production needs to be increased.” She claimed that the oil and gas industry is not pumping as much as before coronavirus.

However, she has voted with the Biden administration 100 percent of the time, standing by the president as he has taken aim at American energy since being in office. Biden has canceled the Keystone XL Pipeline, suspended oil and gas leasing on public lands and waters, halted federal support for oil and gas projects overseas, and suspended oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

But that’s not all. In 2019, she was also a co-sponsor of the Climate Action Now Act, which was intended to “recommit the United States to the environmental standards set forth under the Paris Climate Accord” after former President Donald Trump planned to withdraw from it.

In 2020, she signed a letter with other Michigan congressional delegation members that asked Trump’s U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao to shut down the Line 5 oil and gas pipelines.

And in 2021, the same year Slotkin received a 100 percent score from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) — a leftist environmental group — she voted for the Democrats’ reconciliation package, which targeted the oil, natural gas, and refining industries in the United States, even though some of her vulnerable Democrat colleagues signed a letter to Democrat leadership acknowledging that some of the provisions in the reconciliation package, if passed, had the “potential to cost thousands of jobs, stifle economic recovery, increase energy costs for all Americans, strengthen our adversaries, and ultimately impede the transition to a lower-carbon future.”

Last week, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which helps elect Republicans to Congress, launched an ad campaign targeting ten vulnerable Democrats they wish to unseat — Slotkin among them — as gas prices reached a record high for what was then the fourth consecutive day.

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.