Jackson Jambalaya

Appliances may cost more and not work as well as they used to but such means little to Congressman Bennie Thompson as he voted against a bill that would fix this problems last week. 

The House of Representatives passed the Home Appliance Protection and Affordability Act, H.R. #4626, last week by a vote of 217-190. History and text of bill.   Seven Democrats voted with Republicans to approve the measure.   

It is no secret appliances don't work as well as they used to thanks to the federal government.  Dishwashers and washing machines now take two to three hours to clean.  It costs more than ever to get refrigerant replaced in the car or home.   National Review's  Ben Lieberman reported:  

Federal meddling in refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, furnaces, water heaters, dishwashers, and others began in the 1970s. The 1973 Arab oil embargo sparked a series of ill-advised congressional responses that may have inflicted more damage than the embargo itself. Some persist to this day, including the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 that created a program for regulating energy use in home appliances. It and subsequent amendments set out initial energy efficiency standards and required the DOE to periodically consider making them more stringent — a one-way ratchet.

If this sounds like a formula for regulation run amok, that is exactly what has happened. Fast-forward to today, and washing machines have been regulated six times, dishwashers four times, refrigerators four times, air conditioners three times, and stoves and furnaces twice. Several face an additional round of even more aggressive DOE energy use limits enacted during the Biden administration and scheduled to take effect over the next few years. Note that several of these appliances also face environmental regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Granted, in 2023, Biden’s regulators backed away from tough proposed gas stove restrictions in the face of a powerful consumer backlash, but they seemingly made up for it by going hard after everything else.....

Nearly all such regulations raise the up-front cost of appliances, and often by more than is likely to be earned back in the form of marginal energy savings. Some of the worst are yet to come, including a Biden-era furnace rule estimated by the DOE to raise purchase and installation costs by as much as $867 when it takes effect in 2028 and one for electric water heaters that will boost prices by $953 in 2029. And, to take a little more money out of our wallets, already-overregulated light bulbs will nearly double in price when the next regulation takes effect in 2028.

Costliest of all are the current measures affecting residential central air-conditioning systems, a combination of DOE efficiency standards and Environmental Protection Agency rules requiring that new systems meet certain climate-change-related requirements. Installers say that replacing a 15-year-old system that probably cost around $5,000 when new will be more than twice that now.

Beyond costs, many of these measures have adversely affected how well some appliances work. Dishwashers now take two hours or more to finish a normal load, about twice as long as before federal regulators decided to “improve” them. Washing machines reportedly require more maintenance and may not clean as well, and refrigerators tend to conk out several years sooner than they used to.

Some regulations effectively outlaw certain versions of appliances. For example, the above-mentioned furnace rule will eliminate non-condensing natural gas models, despite the fact that they are the best option for millions of older homes with traditional chimneys.

The Trump DOE hates these appliance regulations as much as team Biden loved them, and it has proposed reforms to several, including ones for washing machines and dishwashers. This is very helpful, assuming the regulatory changes survive the inevitable court challenges. But even if they do, agency-level actions can be undone by a subsequent administration, as occurred with several appliance reforms from the first Trump administration that were reversed under Biden. That is why legislation is needed to permanently curtail the regulatory excess.

The Home Appliance Protection and Affordability Act contains a number of useful provisions. Perhaps most importantly, this House-passed measure strengthens the agency’s authority to revisit past standards that did not go as planned, be it unexpectedly high costs or adverse impacts on appliance quality. As the Energy Policy and Conservation Act now stands, once an appliance regulation is issued, it cannot easily be relaxed no matter how bad the results. But under this bill, such regulatory mistakes can be revised or even repealed by the agency.

In addition, the bill raises the bar on any new standards by requiring a more rigorous showing that the consumer benefits outweigh the costs. It also prohibits climate change from being a rationale for regulation, as it had become under Biden and Obama. Rest of article.

Of course, Congressman Bennie Thompson voted against the bill.  So great is his hatred for all things Republican that he would rather see them suffer than get relief from ruinous federal mandates on appliances.