Republican Leader Scalise predicts Biden might reverse course on landmark HR 1 energy bill

House Republicans are pushing through this week with their big energy package that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has deemed a “big oil wish list.”

Self-proclaimed “optimist” Majority Leader Steve Scalise told DailyMail.com at a news conference that he thought President Biden could reverse course and support the bill, just as he did with the DC crime bill — a GOP-led venture that Biden recently signed into law.

But after a veto threat came down on Monday, that prospect is unlikely.

Republicans called energy their top priority in dubbing their Lower Energy Cost Bill HR 1. The bill includes provisions to overhaul the energy production and licensing process and will receive a final vote on the House floor on Thursday.

Scalise, R-La., said the leadership was working to wrangle all Republicans on board as the House votes through 37 amendments to the bill and the bill would certainly get “at least a few” Democratic votes in the House.

Scalise said he would like the provisions in HR 1 to be part of Chairman Kevin McCarthy and President Biden’s debt ceiling negotiations — the pair must work out a deal to raise the $31.4 trillion loan limit before a June deadline , otherwise the country risks default.

Schumer insisted weeks ago that the bill would not stand a chance in the Senate.

“It’s a non-starter in the Senate,” the Democratic leader declared, calling the bill a “big oil wish list.”

“The only way we can pass a real energy package this Congress is through bipartisan cooperation,” Schumer added.

While the broad energy package may not pass the Senate, Republicans hope to work to pass at least some reform proposals.

“A number of senators have reached out and are willing to help get this bill into the Senate,” Scalise insisted. “They talk clearly to their colleagues. I hope they get enough Democratic senators to participate. I’m an optimist.’

“Once it gets to the Senate. It will gain momentum,” Scalise said.

“They’re going back to the DC Crimes bill — when that bill came out, a lot of people in the press said it was a partisan bill. President said he was against it. And when it was over, they had some Democrats join it.”

Biden surprised House Democrats when he announced he would not veto a Republican-led bill that would overturn some criminal justice reforms in Washington, DC. Some privately said they would have voted for the bill if they knew Biden would not veto it.

He announced that he would not veto until the Senate had voted on the legislation, giving Senate Democrats cover to vote in favor of the bill.

The bill would speed up the federal licensing process for oil and gas pipelines and for the extraction and production of critical minerals. It also includes provisions to force the Biden administration to ramp up sales of oil and gas leases on federal land and to remove all import and export restrictions on natural gas.

It would expand oil and gas drilling through the Clean Water Act, which liberal states have used to block such projects, and scale back two climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act — the federal allowance for methane emissions and the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

It would also end the federal moratorium on coal leasing and limit the president’s authority to restrict cross-border energy projects like the Keystone XL pipeline that Biden banned upon taking office.

‘There is no reason why we should source energy from abroad. If we can make it here, cleaner, more efficiently and at significantly lower costs than anywhere else in the world. This bill will achieve that’, Scalise insisted.

However, the White House insists that HR 1 would “replace consumer policy with a thinly disguised license to pollute.”

“It would increase costs for American families by repealing household energy rebates and reversing historic investments to improve access to cost-reducing clean energy technologies,” the White House said.

It said Biden wants to “work bipartisanly with Congress to reduce energy costs, enable reform and address energy challenges,” but the bill would “set us back.”