WATCH: Speaker McCarthy Says That ESG ‘Needs To Be Reined Back’

On Tuesday morning CNBC aired Squawk Box host Joe Kernan interviewing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

At one point, Kernan asks Speaker McCarthy about the “anti-business tone” that is rampant in the country and how the Democrats’ solution to inflation seems to be to try to decrease demand with the Fed rather than increase supply. Speaker McCarthy then jumps in to bring up the push to have businesses report on their record regarding  Environment, Social, and Governance(ESG).

"There is an anti-business tone in the country right now. What are you going to do? Shouldn't you be doing that [rather than] all these investigations?" @JoeSquawk asks @SpeakerMcCarthy: pic.twitter.com/ez4jlMOmQS

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) February 7, 2023

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Here is the transcript:

KERNAN: The U.S. economy — we all want to grow the pie, we all want a vibrant economy — it’s made up of private companies… private and public companies. What is the state of the way… I guess that Washington looks at American business right now because it’s sharply divided. We’re going to hear about tripling the one-percent tax on buy-backs, we’ve got the fifteen percent corporate tax, we’ve got just windfall profits because the oil companies made so much money and they’re enriching executives and wealthy shareholders. There is an anti-business tone in the country right now —

SPEAKER MCCARTHY: (Interrupting) There’s ESG. You’ve got individuals —

KERNAN: There’s ESG. What are you going to do? If I were you, I would think it would be essential to get things back on track for U.S. businesses. The reason that we’re trying to kill demand with the Fed is because we’re not trying to increase supply. We’re not cutting taxes, we’re not cutting regulations, we’re not opening up ANWR, we’re not drilling on federal lands like we — We’re not doing any of the supply side things that would actually help the economy. Is that something that Repub —

SPEAKER MCCARTHY: It’s one of the core things if you look at our Commitment to America —

KERNAN: (Interrupting) It’s like the only thing! Should you be looking at all these investigations and going back and all that or should you be…?

SPEAKER MCCARTHY: We can walk and chew gum at the same time, and in Congress, we have responsibilities, right?

KERNAN: You’ve been around here long, we know you can, right?

SPEAKER MCCARTHY: I know we can, I’ve watched us do it before. Look, getting America to become energy independent is not only strong for our economy, it’s better for the world. American natural gas is forty-one percent cleaner than Russian natural gas. Why wouldn’t we think from a perspective — if you want to think of it geopolitical — why wouldn’t we want China dependent on our natural gas for their own economy? Would the world not be safer and would we not be stronger? Why wouldn’t we create more American jobs at the same time?

Where Democrats have failed time and again is when they pick one form of energy instead of all. Every study will tell you, we need to double every form of energy we have now. And what we’re finding — look, I live in California, so I live through this problem, right? I’ve watched Gavin Newsom shrink the production of California oil by twenty percent — eighty-thousand barrels — but he buys fifty-thousand barrels a day from Putin. I watched him shrink our grid by nine percent and then tell us that we can only buy electric cars, which, at that moment would take fourteen percent of the grid, right now it’s one-half of one percent, then he tells you when it gets hot, you can’t charge it. This is a backwards thought.

I’ve watched government go into regulation with this new majority, I’ve watched them go after business, I watched them bring ESG. This all has to be reined back. We now have to allow business to perform themselves, which would make America stronger, make our economy better, take care of our supply chain. What we’ve watched Democrats also do is take away these work requirements. And when you take away the work requirements, they incentivize people to stay home. Which gave you part of inflation in wages, which gave you a part of the supply chain problem and people productivity. So, there’s a lot of areas that we can be successful in that you might not see it as a big bill passing, but will be fundamental to the basics of work in America that will get us more productive, make us stronger, make us more energy independent, and, I think, the future to be much brighter.