House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., is flanked by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., left, and Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., as he talks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington, March 24, 2023. House Republicans are set to approve a sprawling energy package that counters virtually all of President Joe Biden’s agenda to address climate change. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

By Matthew Daly in Washington

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans on Thursday approved a sprawling energy package that seeks to undo virtually all of President Joe Biden’s agenda to address climate change.

The legislation would sharply increase domestic production of oil, natural gas and coal, and ease permitting restrictions that delay pipelines, refineries and other projects. It would boost production of critical minerals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt that are used in electric vehicles, computers, cellphones and other products.

By a 225-204 vote, the House sent the measure to the Senate, where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called it “dead on arrival.” Four Democrats joined with all but one Republican to support the bill.

Biden has threatened to veto the bill, saying it would replace “pro-consumer policies” adopted in the landmark climate law approved last year “with a thinly veiled license to pollute.” The bill would roll back Democratic investments in clean energy and ”pad oil and gas company profits,” the White House said.

Republicans call the bill the “Lower Energy Costs Act” and gave it the symbolic label H.R. 1 — the top legislative priority of the new GOP majority, which took control of the House in January.

The measure combines dozens of separate proposals and represents more than two years of work by Republicans who have chafed at Biden’s environmental agenda. They say Biden’s efforts have thwarted U.S. energy production and increased costs at the gas pump and grocery store.

“Families are struggling because of President Biden’s war on American energy,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., one of the bill’s main authors.

The GOP bill will “unleash” abundant U.S. natural resources “so we can produce energy in America,” Scalise said. “We don’t have to be addicted to foreign countries that don’t like us.”

Democrats called the bill a giveaway to big oil companies.

“Republicans refuse to hold polluters accountable for the damage they cause to our air, our water, our communities and our climate,” said New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“While Democrats delivered historic wins for the American people by passing historic climate legislation, Republicans are actively working to undermine that progress and do the bidding of their polluter friends,″ Pallone said.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said the bill “restores American energy leadership by repealing unnecessary taxes and overregulation on American energy producers,” and “makes it easier to build things in America” by placing a two-year time limit on environmental reviews that now take an average of seven years.

“Every time we need a pipeline, a road or a dam, it gets held up five to seven years and adds millions of dollars in costs for the project to comply with Washington’s permitting process,” McCarthy said in speech on the House floor. “It’s too long, it’s unaffordable, it’s not based on science and it’s holding us back.”

He pointed to a project to modify and improve Lake Isabella Dam in his central California district that has lasted 18 years and still is not completed.

“Permitting reform isn’t for everyone,” McCarthy added. “If you like paying more at the pump, you don’t want to make it faster for American workers to build more pipelines. If you’re China, you’d rather America sit back and let others lead. And if you’re a bureaucrat, maybe you really do enjoy reading the 600-page environmental impact studies.”

Most Americans want lower prices and more U.S. energy production, McCarthy said — results he said the bill will deliver.

Democrats called that misleading and said the GOP plan was a thinly disguised effort to reward oil companies and other energy producers that have contributed millions of dollars to GOP campaigns.

Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, derided the bill as the “Polluters Over People Act” and “a nearly 200-page love letter to polluting industries.”

Instead of reining in “Big Oil” companies that have reported record profits while “hoarding thousands of unused leases” on public lands and waters, the GOP bill lowers royalty rates paid by energy producers and reinstates noncompetitive leasing of public lands, Grijalva said.

The bill also gives mining companies “a veritable free-for-all on our public lands” and “makes mockery of tribal consultation” required under federal law, he said.

Under the GOP plan, mining companies will “destroy sacred and special places” throughout the West, “ruin the landscape and leave behind a toxic mess that pollutes our water and hurts our health — all without paying a cent to the American people,” Grijalva said.

Schumer called the measure “a giveaway to Big Oil pretending to be an energy package.”

The House energy package “would gut important environmental safeguards on fossil fuel projects,” locking America “into expensive, erratic and dirty energy sources while setting us back more than a decade on our transition to clean energy,” Schumer said.

Schumer said he supports streamlining the nation’s cumbersome permitting process for energy projects, especially those that will deliver “clean energy” such as wind, solar and geothermal power. “But the Republican plan falls woefully short on this front as well,” he said, calling on Republicans to back reforms that would help ease the transition to renewable energy and accelerate construction of transmission lines to bolster the nation’s aging power grid.

The Republican bill would repeal a new $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and other parts of the climate and health care law passed by Democrats last year. The fund, also known as a “green bank,” is set to provide low-cost financing for projects intended to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

The House bill also would eliminate a new tax on methane pollution that would charge companies for methane leaks from oil and gas wells.

Four Democrats voted in favor of the bill: Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzales of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., opposed the bill.

Pope Francis bows his head behind Indigenous chiefs preparing to perform a traditional dance at a ceremony in Maskwacis, Alta., on Monday, July 25, 2022. The Vatican has rejected the Doctrine of Discovery a year after Francis met with Indigenous groups from Canada and delivered his first apology for the Catholic Church’s role in residential schools. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

By Kelly Geraldine Malone and Stephanie Taylor

The Vatican has formally denounced a 15th-century doctrine used to legitimize the seizure of Indigenous land, but the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations says the Roman Catholic Church should go further to repair the harm caused by the decrees.

A statement from the Vatican on Thursday said the papal bulls used as the basis for the Doctrine of Discovery “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples.”

The papal bulls were connected to the idea that lands being colonized were empty, when in fact Indigenous people had long called them home.

“The world was told that we were unworthy and that our lands were empty,” National Chief RoseAnne Archibald said in a phone interview Thursday.

“We need the world to know that we are worthy, that we are valuable.”

Archibald said the Vatican’s words are a step in the right direction, but added the Catholic Church should introduce a new statement affirming the value of Indigenous Peoples.

She also called for the church to return land and sacred items to First Nations.

Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents 73 First Nations in Saskatchewan, said in a statement the legal doctrines “allowed Canada to unilaterally claim sovereignty over our peoples and our lands and further used it as an excuse to commit genocide.

“Today, the Vatican finally said what our peoples have always known.”

More than 500 years ago, popes began issuing the first of a series of edicts, known as papal bulls.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which investigated residential schools in Canada, said these bulls helped shape the political and legal arguments that became known as the Doctrine of Discovery.

The commission’s final report included a call to action for all religious denominations “to repudiate concepts used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous lands and peoples, such as the Doctrine of Discovery.”

Last March, First Nations, Métis and Inuit groups went to Rome to meet with Pope Francis. Francis apologized for the church’s role in residential schools, but delegates also told him the doctrine must be rejected.

The pontiff travelled to Canada in July for a six-day tour, during which he apologized again for residential schools and was criticized for not addressing the papal bulls. Throughout his stops in Alberta, Quebec and Nunavut, people held signs and yelled for the Pope to reject the doctrine.

Donald Bolen, the Archbishop of Regina, said Indigenous people made it clear that the Vatican needed to address the issue.

“The language in those bulls is deeply wounding and problematic, and there was a desire for the Holy See to address it, and they have.”

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, of which Bolen is a member, said in a statement that it’s grateful Indigenous organizations urged the move. The conference signed a statement calling for the church to reject principals associated with the doctrine in 2016.

Bolen said the Vatican’s statement Thursday shows Francis was listening to Indigenous people during their meetings at the Vatican and throughout his time in Canada.

“I think there’s no doubt that it’s a response given at the request of Indigenous people in Canada,” he said.

The statement from the Vatican, however, said the doctrine is not part of the teachings of the church and the documents were “written in a specific historical period and linked to political questions.”

The Vatican said the contents of the documents were manipulated for political purposes to justify “immoral acts against Indigenous Peoples.”

“It is only just to recognize these errors, acknowledge the terrible effects of the assimilation policies and the pain experienced by Indigenous peoples, and ask for pardon.”

Cody Groat, who is Mohawk from Six Nations in Ontario and an Indigenous studies professor at Western University, said implying that the church never advanced the doctrine shifts the blame.

Groat, who is also seeking to be the federal NDP candidate in a rural Ontario riding, said the statement suggests the Vatican recognizes it is in “a period of global reckoning” and had to take this step “in order to stay relevant.”

Archibald agreed that there’s a direct connection between governments, sovereign crowns and the church.

“These papal bulls granted those rights to colonizing sovereigns,” the national chief said.

Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu said Thursday the federal government will be taking a closer look at the Vatican’s statement to see what next steps it might take.

“For a long time I think Canadians have known and the government of Canada has known that the colonialism that Indigenous Peoples have faced for over 150 years have had devastating consequences.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 30, 2023.