11 House Dems vote with Republicans to overturn Biden’s gas water heater ban

A handful of House Democrats joined Republicans in passing a resolution on Thursday to block a Biden-era appliance regulation.

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced a new rule in the final days of former President Joe Biden’s term to ban non-condensing, natural-gas-fired water heaters by 2029. 

The rule was set to go into effect in March but faces headwinds after a resolution to overturn the appliance rule was passed in the House, with every House Republican and 11 Democrats voting for its passage. 

“The Democrats want control,” Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., who introduced the Congressional Review Act (CRA) in January with Fox News Digital, said ahead of the vote. “Their cold rhetoric leads to cold homes and cold water.”

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Rep. Gary Palmer introduced a resolution to overturn Biden’s ban on some water heaters. (Reuters)

“The American people were tired of being told what to do, what they could buy, what they could wear, what they could use,” Palmer said on the House floor. “That’s why I introduced this resolution, because we’re determined to restore a quality of life in this country that we enjoyed before the Democratic Party took over the White House, and the House and the Senate.”

“We believe that we can help American people be able to afford their groceries, afford an automobile, afford their education, and that is why we are doing what we’re doing,” he added.

The vote comes after the owner of a tankless water heater manufacturing facility, Frank Windsor, recently warned that hundreds of jobs could be at risk if the new rule were to go into effect, telling FOX Business that the ban on “very efficient and highly effective technology for water heating” does not align with consumer interests.

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The CRA was introduced by Rep. Gary Palmer of Alabama. (Tom Williams)

“The scary thing is most Americans don’t understand what’s going on with these, I would describe, radical energy decisions that people are making that are going to have far-reaching impacts on consumers,” Windsor, president of Rinnai America Corporation, told FOX Business in an interview.

House Republicans are working to introduce resolutions derailing Biden’s climate agenda, specifically overturning regulations on household appliances. 

Angel Gomez (L) and Franes Mendez, technicians at heating, cooling and plumbing company John G. Webster, remove a gas water heater from a home in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 2024.  (Bastien Inzaurralde)

The House passed another CRA on Wednesday to overturn the Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Methane Emissions and Waste Reduction Incentive Program.

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Also on Wednesday, a Democrat-led resolution to reverse President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring an “energy emergency” failed to pass in the Senate.