WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) today sent letters to Biden Administration officials to ensure that, in accordance with the Congressional Review Act (CRA), they will submit to Congress for review rules recently issued by their respective departments that would weaponize Americans’ retirement savings and federal contractors to advance a green-energy and social-justice political agenda.
In a letter to Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh, Hagerty expressed concern regarding a rule that permits private-sector retirement plans to make investments based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, effectively allowing corporate officials to use other people’s money to advance a left-wing political agenda, which will ultimately harm Americans’ retirement savings by channeling them into woke priorities over productive investments.
“This rule will enable retirement plan fiduciaries to use the retirement savings of millions of Americans to further partisan political goals—against the interests of their investors,” Hagerty wrote.
In a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, General Services Administration (GSA) Administrator Robin Carnahan, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Administrator Bill Nelson, Hagerty criticized a recent proposed rule that requires federal contractors to implement an unrealistic and costly green-energy agenda, including measuring the climate-change impact of third parties with which they do business and reducing fossil-fuel use. These new green regulatory mandates will increase inflation by raising the cost of goods and the taxpayer resources required to purchase them weaken our national security by forcing suppliers to focus on eliminating fossil fuels, rather than simply making the best products to help our brave men and women in uniform keep us safe.
“If implemented, this rule will weaponize the purchasing power of the federal government to impose unrealistic and costly ‘Green New Deal’-style mandates on thousands of businesses with government contracts. The costs and burdens of these new mandates would be passed on to American taxpayers and would significantly impact the American economy by forcing businesses to spend significant time and resources implementing a political agenda,” Hagerty wrote.
The CRA allows Congress to oversee the federal regulatory process by allowing it to revoke, through a resolution of disapproval, certain rules that substantively affect the American people, as these recently issued rules do.
A copy of the letter to Labor Secretary Walsh can be found here.
A copy of the letter to Defense Secretary Austin, GSA Administrator Carnahan, and NASA Administrator Nelson can be found here.
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