Laid-Off Pipeline Worker Slams Biden Admin: They've 'Taken My Livelihood from Me'
The devastating fallout of President Joe Biden’s job-killing apocalypse continues, rendering many unemployed Americans feeling scared and hopeless.
Jason Jernigan, a veteran pipeline worker who got laid off last month after Biden flippantly killed the Keystone XL Pipeline project on his first day in office as part of a move to combat a “climate crisis,” has a message for the president: Biden’s administration has “taken my livelihood from me.”
The project was supposed to employ as many as 11,000 workers, but Biden eliminated all those well-paying jobs with an executive order.
“The recent administration has taken my livelihood from me and is expecting me to get a job somewhere else. I’ve got my whole life invested in this,” Jernigan, 45, said in a video Monday on Fox News.
“I’ve been pipelining for 21 years. This is all I know to do.”
In an interview on “America’s Newsroom,” Jernigan said he is a third-generation oil and gas worker. Because of his decades of experience as a union pipeliner, he earned a good salary.
Now that’s gone, and he’s worried that he has to scrounge around for any job that pops up in order to support himself.
“I spent my whole life learning this craft and this skill, and it’s not as easy as somebody might think or people might think to just start all over at 45 years old,” he said.
“I guess I could possibly get a job as a greeter at Walmart. I don’t know.”
[firefly_poll]
Jernigan was hired to work on the Keystone XL Pipeline last year when then-President Donald Trump authorized the project. He was supposed to start working next month.
After Biden was installed in the White House, he issued a sweeping series of executive orders prioritizing “green energy” initiatives to combat climate change.
Last month, Biden’s jet-setting climate czar, John Kerry, said energy workers who get laid off shouldn’t worry because there will be plenty of jobs in the new “green economy” for them.
Specifically, Kerry claimed that the fastest-growing job in the United States was that of a solar power technician.
“The choice of doing the solar power one now is a better choice,” he said. “[Oil and gas workers] have been fed the notion that somehow dealing with climate is coming at their expense. No, it’s not.”
John Kerry is asked what his message would be to oil and gas workers who “see an end to their livelihoods”:
“What President Biden wants to do is make sure that those folks have better choices… That they can be the people to go to work to make the solar panels.” pic.twitter.com/i9TYXlD9Jg
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 27, 2021
Jernigan said this is a false narrative.
“First of all, I haven’t been offered a job in the solar panels industry and I haven’t been sent an application or a phone number or anything,” he said.
“And secondly, I mean, I’ve done the research. If I went to work for the solar panel right now, I would be taking a $35-an-hour pay cut and lose my benefits and retirement.”
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas slammed Kerry for his condescending attitude toward blue-collar union workers who are despondent over losing their livelihoods.
“What an arrogant, out-of-touch statement for a centimillionaire to say,” Cruz told Fox News in January.
“Quelle surprise that the Democratic elites have decided that blue-collar workers — that union members, that men and women with calluses on their hands — they’ve made the wrong choices, in John Kerry’s words.”
Over the weekend, Trump torpedoed Biden’s lame energy policies, saying they would be catastrophic for Americans.
Thanks to Joe Biden gas prices are already up.
Now just wait until his radical environmental policies really kick in. pic.twitter.com/dGrAvvNQQO
— Cassandra (@CassyWearsHeels) February 23, 2021
“The Biden policies are a massive win for other oil-producing countries and a massive loss for the United States and our great citizens,” the former president said Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida
“So enjoy that when you go to the pump and they’ll say that’d be about $200 to fill up your van.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
