Craig Goldman Cost of Living Billionaires & Big Business Texas

Craig Goldman Chaired the Texas Committee That Cleaned Up After Winter Storm Uri. Texans Are Still Paying the Gas Companies Until 2039.

246 Texans died in Uri. Goldman chaired House Energy Resources in the session that followed. His committee advanced HB 1520 unanimously, which put $3.5 billion of gas companies' storm costs onto customers' bills through April 2039 — and a 2025 state audit found the gas weatherization rules produced 2 violations out of 8,732 inspections.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 10, 2026

Craig Goldman Chaired the Texas Committee That Cleaned Up After Winter Storm Uri. Texans Are Still Paying the Gas Companies Until 2039.

Winter Storm Uri hit Texas in February 2021. More than nine million people lost power. The state's own Department of State Health Services eventually put the official death toll at 246, across 77 counties, ranging in age from under one year old to 101. Most died of hypothermia. Independent excess-mortality analyses put the real number far higher.

When the Legislature convened to answer for it, the chairman of the Texas House Committee on Energy Resources — the committee with jurisdiction over the natural gas system that failed — was Craig Goldman of Fort Worth.

Goldman is now in his first term in the U.S. House, sitting on the Energy and Commerce Committee. Voters in Texas's 12th District should know what he did with the chairmanship.

What he said in March 2021

On March 4, 2021, three weeks after the storm, Goldman appeared with state Sen. José Menéndez in a Texas Tribune interview about what the Legislature would do. He was slated to carry one of Speaker Dade Phelan's seven priority bills — the one mandating weatherization of the state's natural gas infrastructure.

Here is how the chairman described where those discussions stood:

"We're still in discussions of what that means … to those oil and gas industry corporations and businesses, because if they say, 'We can't afford to do this,' … that's not good."

Two hundred forty-six people were dead. The open question, per the chairman, was what the gas companies could afford.

What the committee actually moved

The signature product of that session's gas-side response was House Bill 1520. The caption is plain enough: "Relating to certain extraordinary costs incurred by certain gas utilities relating to Winter Storm Uri … providing authority to issue bonds and impose fees and assessments."

The mechanics: during the storm, spot gas prices spiked, and gas utilities ran up enormous bills to their suppliers. HB 1520 let them borrow the money through state-authorized bonds, get paid immediately and in full — and then bill their own customers to retire the bonds, with interest, over decades.

It went through Goldman's committee. The legislative record shows House Committee: Energy Resources; committee vote Ayes 8, Nays 0. Signed by the governor June 16, 2021, effective immediately.

And here is what it means in a household budget, from the Railroad Commission of Texas's own announcement:

"A CRR Charge of $1.10 per Mcf ($0.11 per Ccf) will be included in the gas cost portion of bills starting October 1, 2023."

The charge applies across ten utilities — Atmos Mid-Tex, Atmos West Texas, CenterPoint Energy, Texas Gas Service and others — and the Commission says it is anticipated to continue through April 2039. Roughly $3.5 billion in gas costs, moved off the gas companies' books and onto the monthly bills of Texans, for eighteen years.

The suppliers who charged those prices during the storm were made whole in 2021. The families who sat in the cold are still paying for it, and will be until their children are grown.

What happened to the weatherization mandate

The Legislature did pass weatherization requirements in Senate Bill 3 in 2021, directing the Railroad Commission to identify critical natural gas facilities and make sure they were ready for winter.

Four years later, the Texas State Auditor's Office checked. Its report, covered by KUT on August 18, 2025, found:

Across 8,732 inspections in the 2024 and 2025 winters, regulators issued two violations — both to facilities with no weatherization measures at all.
The Commission "did not compare facilities' actual weatherization methods to the Commission's best practices." In effect, companies set their own standard.
Inspectors did not verify that required staff safety training had happened; they took the companies' word for it. Auditors warned this "increases the risk that some staff will not be prepared for severe winter weather events."
No improvement recommendations were given to any of the 8,730 facilities that passed.

That is what the mandate turned into. The chairman's worry in March 2021 was what the industry could afford. The answer, four years on, is that it did not have to afford very much.

Why this is the same story he's telling now

Goldman took his energy career to Washington. He sits on Energy and Commerce. His only enacted law wiped out federal efficiency standards for commercial refrigerators — standards the Energy Department calculated would net the businesses that buy them $1.32 billion to $3.43 billion. In February 2026 he introduced a bill to put a five-year automatic expiration date on every federal energy regulation at DOE, Interior and FERC, saying: "Texas leads the nation in passing prudent energy deregulation policies. It's time for the federal government to follow Texas' example."

Texans know what the Texas example looks like. It looks like a $1.10 charge on the gas bill through April 2039, two violations out of 8,732 inspections, and 246 people who did not survive the last time the system was tested.

Goldman has a 0% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters. He did not hold a public town hall in his first year in Congress. When constituents protested outside a Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce breakfast in September 2025 asking him to meet them, he said it "was not clear to him what the demonstration was aimed at."

We deserve better.