Pence: Left’s Climate Agenda About Hamstringing U.S. Economy

The global and leftist freakout over President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change accord is giving Vice President Mike Pence déjà vu.

Pence said Friday on “The Laura Ingraham Show” that he is reminded of the Kyoto climate agreement negotiated in 1997. The United States never ratified the treaty, and President George W. Bush abandoned it.

“What they saw in the Rose Garden was an American president putting America first.”

“The agenda of the Left in this country and around the world with regard to climate change has in my judgment from the days of the Kyoto Protocol, from the days of cap-and-trade when I was in the Congress, and all the way through 2015 and the Paris accord have always been about hamstringing the American economy while allowing countries like China and India to continue to develop apace and while our taxpayers and our workers pay the burden,” he said. “And yesterday, President Donald Trump said those days are over.”

“When the United States got out of the Kyoto Protocol you remember, back during the Bush years, we heard the same apocalyptic pronouncements from the Left in this country and around the world,” he said. “The result of that was for the next 14 years, we actually reduced CO2 emissions by 18 percent just through American innovation and industrial creativity. I couldn’t be more proud.”

And Kyoto is hardly the only time the United States has upset other countries, Pence said.

“You can see many times in the salons of Europe [that] American presidents and the United States were accused of the very same thing, every time we put America first,” he said. “Every time we stood up for the interests of the American people, we usually drew the ire of the wider world. But there’s a reason why we’re the freest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world.”

Pence repeated Trump’s line from his announcement Thursday — that he was elected to be the president of Pittsburgh, not Paris.

“What they saw in the Rose Garden was an American president putting America first,” he said.

Pence also pushed back on the narrative that the United States had diminished its credibility. He said Trump’s recent trip abroad proves otherwise. He noted that the president took a strong stand in Europe, calling on America’s NATO allies to keep their financial commitments to the alliance.

“That’s being the leader of the free world,” he said. “Those alliances have been strengthened.”

Pence agreed with Ingraham that America is starkly divided. He said that makes it imperative to kick economic growth above 3 percent a year and build on a jobs report Friday that shows the unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level since 2001.

“The antidote is a growing America,” he said. “We’ve just gotten used to lackluster growth.”

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Pence said Trump remains committed to a legislative agenda that includes repealing and replacing Obamacare, reforming the complex tax code and rebuilding bridges and roads throughout the country.

Pence acknowledge the frustration that Congress has not passed any of those items.

“What I can assure you is that all of those issues are moving,” he said. “We’re making steady progress.”

Pence expressed confidence that Trump’s executive order temporarily banning travelers from six terrorism-compromised countries would be upheld in the Supreme Court.

“No one has a right to come into this country,” he said.”It is a privilege to come into the United States of America …  I have every confidence that the Supreme Court of the United States is going to recognized President Trump’s constitutional and statutory authority to put the safety and security of the American people first..”